Thinking About “Categories” and “Tags”
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I read a blog today with a category listed as “I just wanted to make a category called bag of dung.” Well, now that I go back and check, it was a tag not a category . . . Oi! Gevalt! as the Yiddish might go on to say: “What’s the deal with categories?” I’ll leave tags for another post.
On blogs I read some categories are very helpful in navigating my way around. Others are somewhat useless and seem to just take up goofy space on a sidebar. Is there a strategic way to use categories that will enhance our sites? I think there is but before I talk about it, remember what a wise person once told me regarding my advice: “That’s ONE way to look at it.”
First, a big NO NO: Don’t make a bunch of categories out of the blue when you start. It is likely you have no idea what you are going to be blogging about in the coming weeks months and years and these will either needlessly narrow your focus or give your readers false advertising. Start with “General Blog” as the default and if you want, one other of your naming. This tip is based on the old story about the college who saved millions in landscaping costs by allowing the students to groove their own paths between buildings and pouring them in concrete later. A great plugin for batch sorting posts and categories can be found here.
Second, a recommendation: After a period of time, sort your posts into relevant categories. For example: If, out of 25 posts you have 5 that cover the news, 15 that cover humor and 5 that cover pop culture, just make one new category for the large one since that is likely to be a large area for you on your blog. You don’t know if the other areas are going to be major players on your site that will be found through navigation. Default the 2 other small sets of posts back to the “General Blog” category until you re-evaluate after more time to see if there are more of that type.
Finally, another recommendation: Continue doing step two and developing categories in terms of how they develop, not how you plan them to be. You will find your system to be streamlined and natural. Your topics will have category homes almost automatically. NOTE: If you write a post and cannot find a home for it, DO NOT I repeat DO NOT make a category for it. This will make your categories more like titles and they defeat the whole purpose of a searchable archive. For those posts that haven’t “established themselves” yet, find the closest possible category OR just relegate them back to the default until more of their kind warrant starting their own colony ;)
How do you make categories? How important do you see them as being to your readers?
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Tags: blog, computers, Cyberculture
I'm Damien Riley, author and teacher. Here you'll find "think outside the box" posts on psychology and inspiration. 
Funny you should be writing about these as I just deleted a TON of categories on one blog, changed my mind on something, re-imported the entire blog, and then started deleting categories again! My ultimate goal, few categories, so for today, there are a lot of posts in a default category! Could have used that plugin.
It is tags I need to add, I think.
Hi Marcia. I saw some truly useless categories yesterday in my haunts about town and it prompted me to write that post. I hope it helped. It just depends on why one blogs ya know? If you’re going for goofy or edgy then categories with “up yours” joke names might be a good choice. I think I need to do a post on tags next. If organizing and creating tags is your cup of tea these days, make sure you get the Ultimate Tag Warrior There are many tag plugins out there, I’ve tried them all and this one absolutely rules the pack. There are some strategies for tags as well as categories. They are also something that is poorly erroneously and under-utilized in the sphere.
I make the categories for my own amusement. If I feel the need to include a ‘real’ category, I’ll throw in a technorati tag on the post.
And like I said, it depends on your purpose. However, there are geeks like me that visit blogspot blogs sometimes and try searching by categories only to be quite lost. With as many posts as you’ve accumulated I would definitely see the fun and usefulness of spending an hour with a coffee going through and narrowing them into categories. But that’s just me!
Ack….I just make a category whenever I feel like it and don’t worry about all that stuff. If someone wants to read it, they will…if not, well, then they won’t. Blogging is supposed to be fun!!!! That’s too much like organizing a closet (which by the way is not fun!) LOL
Jessica
There is wisdom to that statement is a given sense. I’ve been thinking lately about how blogging is about 85% “current post” oriented. the other 15% is about the past archives. For that reason, the categories mostly don’t matter. But if you are looking to get your past posts revisited and cited as sources on material, then categories ae very helpful to your intended audience. since I am 1/2 personal blog and 1/2 reference type blog on a variety of subjects (as many blogs I read are) the clean closet is very helpful for the unwitting visitor. Good point tho Jessica.
Well, I just overhauled a lot of categories on Wordpress dot com blogs. Two of them had started on Blogger, where I began blogging, and so they quite naturally had way too many categories. As you know from a thread on BlogCatalog where you pointed out this thread, Wordpress dot com’s tags feature encouraged me to rethink what I was doing.
Now the categories I’ve got on the personal blog linked to my name here are perhaps still too numerous for you, but I think they’ll work. In any case, I plan to review once in a while. Same with my history blog, Clio and Me. On my language blog I have fewer main categories, but I decided to go with a lot of subcategories, because in that case I think my revolving readership (students) needs to be able to have a more precise navigation system.
Mark Stoneman’s last blog post..Consolidating My Web Empire
Take some of my stuff with a grain of salt, I get very sarcastic. Ultimately you have to do what you think is best. In blogging we are all pioneers that way. Having said that, I recommend another desktop app for you called textSTAT. It scans your entire set of posts and shows you what words appear the most often. It’s useless for noobs, you have to have a lot of content behind you. This is how I whittled down my categories way back when. tags are different, throw as many in as are relevant … that’s Allstate’s stand, are you in good hands? ;) Stay in touch bro!