I have been using WordPress to publish my CTNET blog for about six months. For most of that time, I was more concerned about learning how to write good blog posts containing good content.
Last month I purchased WordPress 2021 for beginners by Doctor Andy Williams for Kindle. As I felt, the time has now come to learn more about WordPress. From my perspective, the book contained one real killer piece of information regarding the use of categories and tags.
Unsurprisingly I was using both categories and tags incorrectly. Thankfully I read the book and found these issues now when my CTNET website is still a young website with only a few blog posts. In this article, I will run through where I went wrong and how I plan to resolve it.
So What Is A WordPress Category?
All posts written in WordPress, including this one article, must be assigned to a category. When I read this for the first time, I realized that I had missed the importance of categories and that I wasn’t using them correctly.
A WordPress category allows the blog post writer to categorize which category an article relates to. Allowing related blog posts to be grouped together within the same category. Each category on a WordPress site has its own page created as one of the key elements used in WordPress to structure your website.
My Mistake With Categories
My mistake was that I had no consistency in how I was using categories. I had written some articles about Plex, and some were categorized as Plex Media Server while others were categorized as Plex media.
While other articles were listed under multiple categories, Andy recommends in his book WordPress for Beginners that only one category is used within an article. I consider this to be good advice from a system perspective of keeping my site complexity down.
How Did I Correct These Mistakes?
My first step was to write down a list of new categories on paper. I looked at the articles I had originally written and considered what else I was likely to write about it. It was done solely as a paper exercise at this point.
My initial prototype
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Linux
- Hardware Reviews
- Software Reviews
- Game Reviews
- Game Tips
- Media Server
- Plex
- Emby
Operating Systems would be the parent category for Windows and Linux, which are specific operating systems. While Plex and Emby are specific Media Server systems.
How I Updated The CTNET Website
I didn’t make any changes to my site until last week, to do while I was on holiday as I wanted to make sure I had the time to make the changes in one session, which lasted about 3 hours.
My first step was to add the new categories or, if appropriate, rename any existing categories. I then worked my way through every published article, checked the categories under which the article had been placed, and made any changes as required.
As I worked through my blog posts, gaps appeared in my proposed category list. So I made changes to my initial draft to ensure that there would be no gaps in my categories. I also considered articles that I’m planning to write and publish over the next few months.
The category list for CTNET as of April 2021 is as follows.
- Digital Formats
- Operating Systems
- Windows
- Linux
- Android
- TrueNAS
- Hardware
- Hardware Reviews
- News
- Application
- Application Review
- Application Tip
- Game
- Game Review
- Media Server
- Plex Media Server
- Internet Streaming
- Social Media
So What Is A WordPress Tag
WordPress tags allow us to add another layer of categorisation to a WordPress site. I think of it as a way of subdividing a category into a number of related categories.
For example, take my review of Football Manager 2021. It is categorized as being a game review. It could also be tagged as a PC Game and a Management Sim.
All Tags that are created have a page created by WordPress to group all articles which have that tag. Helping readers find related articles on my website.
What changes did I make?
As with categories, I had no strategy on how I was going to use tags on my website. I had no consistency and had tags with the same meaning but different spellings. These tags have been reorganized or removed. The changes made to categories also required creating some new tags.
Conclusion
I know that my category and tags will continue to evolve over time. I plan to document a process for managing these changes in future.
As always, please feel free to add any comments below.