Organize it -- Add Categories to your blog

Have you ever needed something but didn’t realize it? Well, that happened to me this week. I was looking at genealogy blogs at geneabloggers and saw one that had “categories” above the labels list (I can’t remember which blog this was.) 

What a wonderful idea!! I looked at my blog and noticed that I had over 150 labels in my labels list! And being a born organizer, I realized that for my readers, I needed to organize these labels into categories. Actually, I would be organizing the posts, with their corresponding labels, into categories.

I first went to google and searched under “adding categories to blogs.” I came across an entry with the title: “Add a Categories section to a blogger Blog blog.” When I clicked on the title, I came to a blog called “Blog Know How” and there was a whole list of categories at the top!! I studied the post from March 19, 2009 (so this idea of adding categories to blogger has been around long before I knew I needed it!) I even printed out the post to study it more.

The author of this blog (I couldn’t find a name under “About Me,” but her handle is “The Wizz”) listed 12 steps to follow to add categories to your blog. But before I could start following the steps, I had to do some preparatory work.

First, as the author suggested, I had to come up with groupings (categories) for my labels. This is how I did it. I went to the home page of my blog. On the right-hand side of the page is the list of labels. I highlighted this list, copied it into a Word file, and printed the file. Then I was able to analyze the list and come up with these 10 categories ( I put an abbreviation after each catetgory except for the first one):

DNA, Document Types (DT), Genalogy Community (GC), Genealogy Education (GE), Genealogy Groups (GG), Genealogy Professionals (GP), Genealogy Tools (GT), Research Terms (RT), US citizenship (US citz), and US Agencies (US Ag)

Next, I went to the "Design" page and clicked on “Posts.” A chronological list of all my posts came up and under each post were listed all the labels associated with that post. I highlighted this list, copied it into a Word file, and printed the file. Then I looked at the labels for each post and put my category abbreviations over the appropriate labels.

I was ready for the final step. I had to add the appropriate category names to each post’s list of labels. I returned to the Post List on the computer and started with this post:

          Get More Bang for Your Genealogical Buck –cluster genealogy, cohort

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The labels associated with this post are “cluster genealogy” and “cohort,” both of which fall into the category of “Research terms.” So I clicked on “Edit” and added “Research terms” to the label list. Now the post entry looked like:

          Get More Bang for Your Genealogical Buck –cluster genealogy, cohort, research terms

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Finally, I was ready to return to 

 the twelve steps provided by The Wizz  and in short order, I had my ten categories on my home page! What a beautiful sight. I am so grateful for the information, ideas, and education that the genealogy and blogging communities regularly share with everyone. And a big hand for The Wizz!