Day 15: Setting Up Blog Categories

22 May 2009

Day 15: Setting Up Blog Categories

Author: Jim | Filed under: 30-Day Blogging

We are at the midpoint of our 30 day blog building workshop, and there is still time to start along with us and get eligible to win one of 5 Business Hosting plans donated to us by HostGator. Find out details on the official contest page!

Now that our blogs are all set up and customized, it is time to start on developing the content-side of things over at our new websites. Remember, your design will get you that initial reputation (VERY important), but your content is actually the “bread and butter” of any successful blog. If you can’t write in a way that keeps readers coming back for more… good luck!

What is a Category Anyway?

When you run a blog through WordPress (or a similar script), you will need to assign each one of your blog posts into a category so that the system can more effectively manage the content that you put out. The key to categories is creating an easier way for your users to find your content, other than looking through the endless archives that your blog may have amassed.

More importantly, many blog themes nowadays take all of your categories and put them in the header (like Jimvesting.com)! This is something that is more normally done with your “pages” (which we will discuss later), but if your blog has its categories listed on the top you want to make sure that you have the best category names possible.

The default category for any post is “uncategorized,” so we clearly need to find a better way to sort our material. You will see at Jimvesting, I have already gone ahead and set up five categories: Announcements, Internet Marketing, Making Money Online, Stock Market and Working From Home. There is no limit to the number you can set up, so feel free to keep it flexible!

How to Create and Test Your Categories

Categories couldn’t be easier to set up with the new version of WordPress. There are essentially two ways to do this in your control panel of WordPress (your “/wp-admin/”). The first way is to go into the full category editor under the “Posts” tab on the left side of your screen. Simply click on “Categories” and add in the name of a new category that you would like. Don’t worry about the “category slug,” as WordPress will handle this for you if you aren’t sure exactly what it is used for (search engine optimization purposes). A newer and more intuitive way to create categories is right on your “Add New” post panel. On the right side of any screen when you are writing a new post… you can find a list of categories to label your post under. You will see in the new WordPress version 2.7 that there is an additional “+ Add New Category” feature that will allow you to edit your settings on the fly.

Want to test your categories? They will ONLY show up if there is a post that is categorized under the category name. Otherwise, you will not see the category on the frontpage of your blog. I repeat: you need to categorize your posts, or the category names will not appear! Make sure that you do this with one of your posts jsut to see how your frontpage will look once you fill up your content section before you continue… it will save you a lot of time on the end.

Win a Free 1-Month Ad Block at Jimvesting!
Simply comment in the area below with a list of three potential categories for a blog that specializes in “Gardening Tools,” and you will have a chance to win! I’ll pick one of the eligible entries (people that pick sensible categories), and announce the results on Day 17 of the competition.

-Jimvesting