What is a WordPress Category and how to use it?

Why use WordPress categories?

Categories are usually the central part of the navigation menus. They allow visitors to easily find the content they are interested in.

WordPress online shops also use categories to group products. Items in sales are then sorted by product types. Similarly, a news site may have categories for their articles, such as Opinion, Sports, and Politics.

If your site covers several different topics, take the time to think about their organization before adding categories. It is essential to think ahead to the structure of your site. This is true for a blog as for an e-commerce site.

For example, should your online store have a category Clothing or several sub-categories such as Dresses, Pants, Shirts, etc.? There is no universal response, and the response must be specifically tailored to your website.

When installing WordPress again, the CMS includes a single default category, named Uncategorized. If you do not select a category for a publication, WordPress automatically places it in that category by default.

Only a WordPress user with administrator role can change the default category. It can be renamed from the Settings» Writing screen of the WordPress dashboard.

The difference between WordPress categories and labels

WordPress taxonomies are a way to group articles and custom types of publications. Categories and labels are popular and frequently used taxonomies.

Categories include broader and more general sections of a website. Labels help identify all items that are labelled with a specific word. They generally refer to more specific and specific topics.

In other words, categories play the same role as the table of contents at the beginning of a book. They divide the content of the site into general topics.

Labels are more like the back index of a book. They assign words describing the exact details of your content.

Another difference is related to the CMS content hierarchy. WordPress will automatically classify your articles in the default category if you do not choose a category. It is impossible to publish the article without it being assigned a category.

However, it is possible for an item to have no associated label. Labels are therefore an optional WordPress taxonomy, while categories are mandatory.

Updated on: 03/05/2023