Using Categories and Tags Novice

WordPress provides two ways to organize your blog posts — categories and tags. Categories and Tags allow you to subdivide the content of multi-item pages into smaller subsets which can be identified more easily by your visitors, thus making the content of your site systematic.

Categories vs. Tags: Which one should I choose?

  • Categories: are used to group your blog posts. They are usually indicators of what your blog post is really about. Categories help your visitors to find the right type of content on your website. They are hierarchical and you can also create subcategories.

Reminder

You should always categorize your blog post otherwise your blog post by default is shown under "Uncategorized" category!

  • Tags: are the keywords that are used to specifically describe your content. They represent the macro data that you can use to micro-categorize your content. Tags are not hierarchical and are optional, as compare to categories.

Adding a new category

One of the key functions in WordPress is organizing the blog posts with categories. Follow the next steps to successfully create a new category:

  1. Open the WordPress Dashboard (Ex: http://yourwebsite.com/wp-admin)
  2. Go to the Blog Posts tab
  3. Select the Categories sub-tab.

  1. In the Add New Category section (on the left side of the page) fill in the following fields:
    • Name: introduce the name of your category
    • Description: enter category description
    • Slug: edit the category URL
    • Parent: categories are hierarchical and you can also create subcategories

  1. Once you have finished, press the Add New Category button

Adding a new tag

  1. Open the WordPress Dashboard (Ex: http://yourwebsite.com/wp-admin)
  2. Go to the Blog Posts tab
  3. Click the Tag sub-tab
  4. In the Add New Tag panel (on the left side of the page) fill in the following fields:
    • Name: introduce the name of your tag
    • Description: enter tag description
    • Slug: edit the tag URL

  1. Once you have finished, press the Add New Tag button