If taxonomy show class of active

Question

I have a nav which I would like to detect if an li should have a class of active or not.

I usually do this for a normal page like this:

    <li <?php if ( is_page('about')) { echo ' class="active"'; } ?>>
                            <a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>/about">About</a>
                        </li>

However I'm doing this on a taxonomy page and I would like to detect the name of the taxonomy term. So I have 4 terms, design, illustration, motion and photography.

How would I go about adding a class to the li of the active taxonomy term?

Here is what I have so far but its wrong:

<li <?php if ( is_taxonomy('illustration')) { echo ' class="active"'; } ?>><a href="<?php echo site_url(); ?> /talcat/illustration">Illustration</a></li>

Update:

I have changed is_taxonomy to is_tax and then defining my taxonomy name and term. However this still isnt working. Here is my update coded:

<li <?php if ( is_tax( $Talcat, $illustration)) { echo ' class="active"'; } ?>>

Answer 1

You should go and read Debugging in Wordpress, as this problem could be easily solved with debug set to true

is_taxonomy() was depreciated in version 3.0 already, and has been replaced with is_tax( $taxonomy, $term )

You'll just need to specifiy your taxonomy and term in the parameters and you should be good to go