How to add and edit post categories

How to use categories on your blog

Categories function as an easy way to organize your posts by topic, making it easier for your website visitors to find content that they are interested in. These categories will show up on your blog page, and they may show up on individual posts, depending on how your template is designed. 

✅ We recommend you start out by defining anywhere from 3–5 categories and sorting your posts accordingly. 

Over time, the number of categories might grow as you decide on better ways to organize your content, but unless you have a very resource-heavy website, you probably won’t want more than 10 total categories. (If you do have a lot of resources that need to be sorted, you can make use of parent categories to organize multiple child categories together.)

✅ We recommend only adding a new category when you have at least three posts to put in that category. It can make for a bad user experience if someone clicks on a category they are interested in and they find that there is only a single post there. It also requires extra clicks for them to navigate to the content, and best practice is always to aim for as few steps as possible. Even if you know you’re going to create more soon, hold off on creating that category until they’re already on your blog.

How to view categories

If you click on the Posts tab on the left-hand side of the admin area, you’ll see a menu of options appear below it: All PostsAdd NewCategories, and Tags. Click on Categories, and the categories screen will show up. 

On the right, you’ll see a list of any categories you have and how many posts are in each category. If you want to see a list of all the posts that are in a given category, click on the number in the Count column, and you’ll be taken to a page that shows all the posts. 

Note: You can also do this from the main Posts screen by clicking on the category drop-down menu and selecting the category you’d like to view. 

How to edit a category

On the screen showing the categories, you can hover over any of your categories to see the options. To edit a category, click on Edit. You’ll be taken to a screen showing the information about that category. Here you’ll be able to change the category name, the URL slug, the parent category, and the category description

Name

You can name your categories as you please, but you’ll want to keep them as concise as possible.

URL slug

The slug is a URL-friendly version of your category name, and it should only include lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. 

✅ We recommend taking the category name, making it entirely lowercase, and adding a hyphen between any words. For example, if we have a category named Website Tutorials, we would make the slug website-tutorials.

Parent category

For most blogs, you won’t need to make use of parent categories, but if you have a website that is really resource-heavy, then you may want to be able to group some of your categories together under a larger umbrella category. This would be where a parent category would come into play. 

For example, if we had categories like Website TutorialsWebsite Maintenance, and Website Design, we may want to put all of those categories into a parent category called Websites.

Category description

Depending on your blog template, this might be used so that when a visitor views the category page, they’ll see a description of the category. This varies, but you’ll know if your blog features this or not. 

How to add a new category

Back on the main Categories page, you can easily add a new category using the left-hand side of the screen. Under Add New Category, you’ll see spaces for the same items: nameslugparent category, and description. Simply enter this information and then click the Add New Category button.

☝️ Tip: If you leave the space for the slug empty, WordPress will take your title and automatically generate a slug for you.

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