categories of posts in WordPress

The initial WordPress installation includes only one special posting category, “Uncategorized”, which is automatically assigned to every post, unless some other category is specified.  I’m adding “WordPress” as a new category, and assigning my initial postings to this category.  (When I switch to posting on another topic, I’ll create another category to cover it, etc.)

Reassigning multiple previously “Uncategorized” posts to a new category is rather tedious, because there isn’t a bulk operation that handles un-assignment from a category.  For that matter, it’s not entirely convenient or obvious how to do a bulk category assignment.  In the Posts screen, the first step is  to place a check-mark in the leftmost column on each posting of interest.  Then select Edit from the drop-down list entitled “Bulk Actions”.  Then Click “Apply”.  This brings up a bulk edit section in the Posts page, which includes a list of category check-boxes.

Unfortunately, while categories can be assigned to multiple posts through the bulk edit interface, it does not support a bulk un-assign or re-assign capability.  The upshot of this is that I might as well go through postings manually, one at a time, and use the “Quick Edit” command against each individual posting.  This method does support both checking and un-checking category assignments properly, and the lack of a bulk reassignment operation is no big deal since I’ve got only a handful of posts to process.  The lesson from this, though, is that it would be best to select categories carefully, in advance of making any great number of postings.

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