Enabling Taxonomy features on a Site Collection created using "Blank Site" template

When you create a new site collection in SharePoint 2010 using the "Blank Site" or "STS#1" site template, the Taxonomy feature (and possibly other features) will not be activated by default. It appears that Microsoft does not staple any features in the farm with the blank site template. This means, there is no way to activate the Taxonomy features in a blank site using the SharePoint UI because the Taxonomy features are hidden.

To activate the features, run the following stsadm command from the command prompt to enable the feature

stsadm -o activatefeature -id "73EF14B1-13A9-416b-A9B5-ECECA2B0604C" -URL "http://siteurl/sitecollection"

This will enable the "TaxonomyFieldAdded" feature on the team site which should bring the "Term Store Management" link in the site administration section of a site. This will also enable you to add the Managed Metada column to your lists and content types.

On a side note, the following features are related to the taxonomy in SharePoint

TaxonomyFeatureStapler

TaxonomyFieldAdded

TaxonomyTenantAdminStapler

TaxonomyTenantAdmin

TaxonomyTimerJobs

All the above features are "hidden" which means that you can't enable them from the SharePoint UI