Tag Archives: category

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.

Related references:

links in WordPress

Not to be confused with the “Link” format of posting, WordPress supports a fairly elaborate mechanism for defining and categorizing what it calls “Links”.  The purpose of these is somewhat obscured by the fact the default WordPress configuration doesn’t enable their display, although it provides a conspicuous group of Links administration facilities in the WordPress Dashboard.  There is also a sampling of links to various official WordPress resource pages, assigned to the link category “Blogroll”, but where are these links supposed to appear?

The answer is that WordPress Links are used to display a “Blogroll” on your home page, but you need to enable this feature by going into the WordPress Dashboard’s Appearance, Widgets screen.  In that screen, drag the Links item from the “Available Widgets” area into the “Main Sidebar” area at the desired position relative to the other widgets listed.  Now your site will show a new section of the main sidebar, with heading “BLOGROLL”, listing the provided sample of links to WordPress resources.

WordPress Links can be categorized, for example “Blogroll” is just the default Link Category, but you needn’t use that category name, and you can define any number of additional Link Categories.  Link Categories, however, are distinct and different from categories of Posts.  Unlike posting categories, link categories have no hierarchical structure, so it might help to think of link categories as being more like a special type of tags. What the Links widget does is simply to list each link category as a heading in the sidebar, and under that heading to display the links assigned to that category.  Link categories are listed in alphabetical order, and links under each category are listed alphabetically by link name (by default – there are additional options for the Links widget).

The preceding remarks apply to WordPress under the Twenty Eleven theme, using WordPress 3.4.2.  Other WordPress themes may deal differently with Links, and there are a variety of WordPress plugins available, for more flexible and sophisticated ways of presenting links.  Here are some helpful references about WordPress Links: