blogmaking.net

There are two main ways of doing this.

1. If you’re really structured and know where your blog is going then you can start off creating categories set up BEFORE you started posting. You can always add more or edit them later. So if you have a list (and a bit of planning is always a good thing) then go to the Dashboard and click on Manage/Categories. You should find that “Uncategorized” is already set up for you. You can’t get rid of this just yet but you can rename it, just click on “Edit” and retype it as whatever you wish… I renamed it “Uncategorised” because I’m Australian and that’s how I spell it.

Back in Manage/Categories there should be an “Add New Categories” box. Fill in the name, keep the “category parent” as “none” for your top level categories, descriptions are optional but helpful for your readers so they’re recommended. You can edit all these later by clicking on Edit in the Category listing (Manage/Categories). In the listing you can also delete any category except the default one, note this doesn’t delete the posts associated with it, just the category labelling.

For the time being I’m creating the following categories:

• WordPress
• News
• Diversions
• Blogging Systems
• Vox
• Writing Tips
• Monetising
• Marketing
• Blogs To Check Out
• Blog Toolbox
• Hosting
• Domain Names
• Opinion
• Site Making

Also because “WordPress” is so broad, I’m also creating some subcategories. If I click on Manage/Categories and under “Add New Category” I fill out the details but set the “parent category” to “WordPress” (which I’ve set up earlier) then it will set up a subcategory for it.

These are the subcategories, I’m setting up:

• WP Basic
• WP Intermediate
• WP Advanced
• WP Themes
• WP Plugins

Note that none of these categories will show up on your main page until they have posts allocated to them. When you write a post, open out the Categories box on Write/Write Post (click the “+” if it’s minimised) and just tick which categories (it can be more than one) you want associated with the post. You can also change categories allocated previously or add new categories through this same process.

2. You can also create categories on the fly in the Categories box on the Write/Write Post page. You can add top level categories (but not subcategories) by typing into the box given and press add, they automatically get added. Use commas to separate categories if you want to add more than one at a time. You also can’t add a description so this method is not recommended unless you are really in a super hurry and absolutely MUST add a new category.

NB I don’t see any need to change the default category from “Uncategorized” (or “Uncategorised”) but if you need to, go to Options/Writing Options and you’ll find a dropdown box called “Default post category” and choose which category you want to have as the default.

NB ALSO Remember that there are also tags for categorising which we’ll be setting up later so sometimes it is best to stick with less categories and use tags for further differentiating.