Categories are like chapters of a book; they provide a general overview of the topics you blog about. Whereas tags are more like the index at the back of the book and explode the topic into a million bits.

On a post you can add as many tags and categories as you need to make the post easier to locate.

The categories and tags you use are displayed in your blog sidebar using the categories widget and tag widget (via Appearance > Widgets).

When your readers click on a categories or tag link on a post or in your sidebar it loads a page with all posts that use that tag or category.

Categories

Categories can have unique names and be wordy; you want them sufficiently descriptive so your reader understands the type of subject matter they will find when they click on the link.

As a general rule you tend to limit the total number of categories you use on a blog.

Below are the categories used on The Edublogger.

Add Categories

Categories are added when you write posts by either:

A.  Select the checkbox next to a category you want to use

B.  Creating a new category

1. Click on the + Add New Category link.
2. Type your new category in the Add New Category text box
3. Click Add New Category

To remove a category from a post just unselect the checkbox to the left of that category.

Tags

Tags are displayed on your blog attached to posts or as a tag cloud in your sidebar.  Clicking on a tag name will take your readers to all posts tagged with that term.

Tags are normally short, one or two words, and are generally keywords (i.e. terms readers would be likely to use if they searched your site); terms that your readers will understand.

Below are the tags used on The Edublogger.

The larger the size of the word in the tag cloud the more posts that have been tagged using that term.

Adding Tags

Tags are added when you write posts by typing your desired tags in the Add New Tag text box and then clicking Add.

Each tag needs to be separated with a comma otherwise the system considers the words to be one tag.

To remove a tag from a post just click the X to the left of that tag.

Properties of pages are:

• Blog pages are displayed independently of post history and are more static i.e. remain the same from day to day since they are rarely updated
• You normally use pages for information that you want to share with your readers but don’t expect to update frequently. e.g. Edublogs Info! on The Edublogger is a page
• Pages don’t have time stamps i.e. don’t show the date they were posted
• Blog pages can appear anywhere on your blog depending on your blog theme
• You can change the order pages appear. Pages are normally displayed in alphabetical order but their order can be changed using Page Order
• You can’t assign tags and categories to pages
• Pages don’t appear in RSS feeds so readers need to visit your site to view the latest updates to pages
• You can’t embed posts into a page
• You can create sub-pages which you assign to a parent page to build a more complex site

See Also:  What Are The Properties of A Post?