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WHY TAGS ARE BETTER THAN CATEGORIES
By admin | July 14, 2008
Topics: Blogging | No Comments »
Most blogs place their posts into different categories, and then itemize the categories in the sidebar. It's the done thing.
But how multipurpose are categories really? Would tags be more adjuvant for your readers?
Few Categories vs. Many Tags
Categories are most trenchant when there's a diminutive sort of them. The diminutive itemize is easily digested by a reverend and organizes your journal into its field sections.
A longer itemize is more confusing for a reader. e.g. If you came here hunting for a place on adding Gravatars to WordPress, and saw both a "Comments" collection and a "WordPress" category, which would you try?
A individual itemize also takes up more expanse in your sidebar, adding muddle to the design. Few things countenance worsened in your sidebar than an likewise daylong itemize of links.
You crapper hit as some tags as you like. There is no requirement to exhibit every the tags on digit page, the most favourite ones crapper be highlighted in a large font, and most importantly, the Gravatars place will be tagged with both "Comments" and "WordPress."
The Categories Are Static
The artefact to ready your itemize of categories diminutive is to not add newborn categories. This leaves lowercase shack for your journal to develop though. The list of categories you prototypal become up with is mostly the itemize you're cragfast with.
If you intend that itemize wrong, you could substantially modify up with the status we hit here, where the vast majority of the posts modify up in meet 2 or 3 of the categories, and another categories hit incoming to hour ( has 2!).
Tags crapper modify as needs be. You crapper add more, and kibosh using older ones. Your journal crapper develop and change, and if digit attach starts to intend likewise some posts, you crapper create more limited tags to add to it.
How To Make The Change
If you don't hit the collection as conception of your permalinks, then there's no chivvy for you. Just kibosh organisation the categories in your sidebar and around your post, and move organisation the tags instead.
If the collection is conception of your permalinks however, you requirement to that module redirect every course from your older permalink structure, to your newborn one. The danger with this is that you crapper never uninstall that plugin, or Google module criminate you of (As both permalinks module exhibit the article).
Categories here on Pro Blog Design are nearby useless. They were poorly intellection discover and no individual adjuvant for uncovering posts, so I hit to mend them. What are they same on your blog?
