Categorising your blog

Posted 28 June 2007, by Aaron

Filing drawer

Since I began writing this blog, I have never really used categories to define what I write. Instead, I prefer to use tags to more loosely associate a number of definitions to everything I write.

However, it struck me that my huge tag cloud at the bottom of every page is not necessarily the most user friendly way to allow visitors to navigate my site. So, inspired by Lorelle’s article on using categories, I’ve gradually been going through all of my archives and moving them out of ‘uncategorised’ and into a more structured and tighter taxonomy.

Because I have not been using categories up until now, I have had no way of monitoring what I am writing about, and what I’m not (and should be) writing about. The lack of categories have prevented me and my blog from truly focusing and establishing an identity.

My lack of categories have made it difficult for potential readers to identify with me and my blog and this has possibly led to slower growth than could have been achieved. That’s not to say growth has been disappointing - I’m on track to meet most of the blogging targets I set myself at the beginning of May - I just believe that growth could have been even stronger with a well categorised site.

So, now I present to you an organised list of 14 categories. The new list can be seen over in the far right column, so feel free to have a browse.

Do you use categories effectively?

Do you use tags or categories on your site? Or both? And how to you prefer to navigate other blogs you visit?

Thanks for the previous posts’ comments: Randa, Paul, Marc, Arpit, David, Vivien and Johno

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Tags:Blogging, WordPress

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6 fantastic comments

My last layout focused more heavily on tags that categories, but that was something I vowed to change when I redesigned - which is exactly what I did.

For me, I think the categories list is almost like a ‘main menu’ from a non-blogging site.

To help clarify things for your readers, I like to think of categories as the blog’s table of contents and the tags as the index, micro-categories.

And I’m glad I could help. It’s so important to clarify your content categories and groups to help not only direct people to the information they need but also to help them represent themselves through the visual keywords categories provide.

Nice addition, Aaron.

I think it’ll really help first-time visitors (and us more regular readers) to come to expect what your articles are about.

You remind me that I should perhaps rephrase some of my category titles. I don’t think ‘blogging’ is a term that best suits the articles underneath. Besides, I’ve never really liked the word.

Paul - That’s my thinking too, and I see you’ve kept the tags too. I think that’s best - rather than having one or the other, give people both.

Lorelle - Thanks for popping by. I like your analogies - that’s a good way to describe the two.

David - It took me ages to come up with my 14 categories. My first stab at it resulted in over 30 categories which kind of defeated the purpose, so I’ve amalgamated and grouped similar categories.

I like the idea of categories it makes stuff much easier to find, although I have the problem that my number of categories keeps growing. Some things just don’t seem to quite fit an existing category do they?

That’s the problem I had Tara. I think in the past some of my articles go outside of what miLienzo.com is supposed to be about, and without having a defined list of categories I’ve not been able to monitor this. If in future articles don’t fit within the existing categories I’ll think twice about whether I need to post it.

There’s also a case for merging similar categories. I can see scope for that in your list of categories.

Categorising your blog

Do you use categories effectively?

6 fantastic comments

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