Categories are a way of grouping related posts together. A post can belong to multiple categories, and categories can be organised into a hierarchy.
Note that WordPress also provides tags – you may wish to use these in addition to categories. Each post must belong to at least one category.
Categories are added to posts using the categories module, or from the edit posts screen.
You can add new categories and manage existing ones from the Categories dashboard page. Click on the Posts > Categories menu.
You will be presented with a list of your existing categories and a method of adding new categories.
Adding a category
You can add a new category by filling out the fields:
Category name – As expected, the name of your category
Category parent – If you want to create hierarchical categories then select the parent category, otherwise leave at none
Description – Describe what the category is for. This description will appear as a tooltip if you use the category widget
Click Add category to add the new details to the list.
Managing existing categories
The list of categories will show you the name, description, and number of posts belonging to each category. If you move your mouse over a category a set of options will appear allowing you to edit, quickedit, or delete that category:
If you click on quickedit the category will change into an edit box and you can rename the category quickly:
If you click on edit you will taken to a separate page where you can edit the name, parent, and description. This functions exactly the same as in adding a category.
Clicking on delete will delete that category.
Deleting a category
When a category is deleted all posts that were only in that category will be assigned to the default category. If a post was also in other categories it will remain untouched.
Note that you cannot delete the default category.
Bulk actions
If you have a lot of categories that you want to delete then you can use the bulk actions feature. Select each category you want to delete using the checkbox to the left of the category name.
If you want to select all categories click the checkbox at the top:
From the bulk actions menu select delete and then click on apply. The categories will be deleted.
Converting categories to tags
If you change your mind about using categories and instead want to convert them to tags you can do so using the category to tag convertor. At the bottom of the manage categories screen is a link to the category to tag convertor.
Clicking this will take you to a screen where you can select which categories to convert to tags. Make your selection, click on convert categories to tags, and your categories will be removed and tags assigned to the posts that used to be in those categories.
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