Posts » Categories vs. Tags

Contents

• Video

Related

• Category Management
• Edit Posts Screen
• Post Author
• Post Categories
• Post Discussion
• Post Excerpt
• Post Revisions
• Post Screen
• Post Status
• Post Tags
• Post Title and URL
• Post Trackbacks
• Post Visibility
• Schedule a Post
• Tag Management

Once upon a time, WordPress.com used to only allow categories to be used.

These allowed for a broad grouping of post topics, but when you wanted to describe a post in more specific terms, more categories were required. That lead to very long category lists inside the blog and very long lists in Categories Widgets. It was also confusing in that what we said were categories other services said were tags.

So we now have tags, as well.

Tags are similar, but instead of a list of words to choose from, you write them in a list (separated by commas) in the Tags Module of your post editing screen. They are free form words and generally describe your post in more detail.

For example, a post titled “Last Night At Burger King” might be filed under the “Dinner” category, but could have tags such as, “burger, chicken fries, chocolate shake, dr. pepper”. Get the gist?

We understand that it may be a bit confusing upon first glance (especially to new bloggers), so here are some common questions and answers that may help you out:

Is Tag the same as tag ?
Yes. Capitals letters do not change a tag. Blogging is the same as blogging.

Is there a limit to the number of tags I can have?
Yes, the sky. In other words, no.

Tag and Category Archive URLs:
If you publish a post attached to a category ‘food’, the URL will look like this:
http://blog.wordpress.com/category/food/

The same post using the tag ‘food’ will look like this:
http://blog.wordpress.com/tag/food/

If you publish a post attached to a category ‘food’ and with the tag ‘rice’, the URLs will look like this:
http://faq.wordpress.com/category/food/
http://faq.wordpress.com/tag/rice/

Is there any advantage to using tags or categories, or both?
No. There is no advantage within WordPress.com and external search engines using one or the other.

Do I have to use tags?
The use of tags is entirely optional (although each post must be attached to at least one category).

Are categories and tags hierarchical?
Categories can be treated that way by making categories children of another. Tags, however, exist in their own right and have no set relationship to anything else.

Video

Watch the “Adding and deleting categories” video from WordPress.tv.
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Watch the “Adding & managing categories after the fact” from from WordPress.tv.
done

Last modified: October 23, 2009