Creating new categories

Today, tomorrow, next month, next year — while your blog grows in size and age, continuing to add new categories further defines and archives the history of your blog posts. You aren’t limited in the number of categories and subcategories you can create in your blog.

Creating a new category is as easy as following these steps:
1. Click Categories in the Posts drop-down list.
The Categories page opens.
2. The left side of the Categories page displays the Add New Category
section (see Figure 7-5).

 

3. Type the name of your new category in the Name text box.

Suppose that you want to create a category in which you file all your posts about the books you read. In the Name text box, type something like Books I Enjoy.
4. Type a name in the Slug text box.
The slug creates the link to the category page that lists all the posts you
made in this category. If you leave this field blank, WordPress automati-
cally creates a slug based on the category name. If the category is Books
I Enjoy, WordPress automatically creates a category slug like http://
yourdomain.com/category/books-i-enjoy. If you want to shorten
it, however, you can! Type books in the Category Slug text box, and
the link to the category becomes http://yourdomain.com/
category/books.
5. Select the category’s parent from the Parent drop-down list.
Select None if you want this new category to be a parent (or top-level)
category. If you want to make this category a subcategory of another
category, select the category that you want to be the parent of this one.
6. (Optional) Type a description of the category in the Description
text box.
Some WordPress templates are set up to actually display the category
description directly beneath the category name (see Book VI). Providing a description further defines the category intent for your readers. The description can be as short or as long as you want.
7. Click the Add New Category button.
That’s it! You’ve added a new category to your blog. Armed with this
information, you can add an unlimited number of categories to
your blog.
You can delete a category on your blog by hovering your mouse pointer on the title of the category you want to delete, and then clicking the Delete link that appears below the category title.

Deleting a category doesn’t delete the posts and links in that category.
Instead, posts in the deleted category are reassigned to the Uncategorized category (or whatever you’ve named the default category).
If you have an established WordPress blog that has categories already cre-
ated, you can convert some or all of your categories to tags. To do so, look
for the Category to Tag Converter link on the right side of the Category page
in your WordPress Dashboard — click it to convert your categories to tags.
(See the nearby sidebar, “What are tags, and how/why do I use them?,” for
more information on tags.)