Using Categories to Organize Posts

Updated 20 August 2016: For the latest information on adding categories to posts, see the Knowledge Base.

Categories are useful for grouping weblog posts that have similar topics. In TypePad a post can be assigned to a single category or multiple categories. Using a basic template set, you can configure your template to display the categories for your posts and list the categories in your weblog sidebar.

Setting up category names

Set up categories on the Configure -> Categories page for your weblog. There you'll find the listing of the default category names and a place to create new categories.

TypePad comes with default categories to use for your posts, you can enable or disable these using the Enable checkbox and saving the changes. Categories that are disabled will not list in the category dropdown selector when creating or editing an entry.

To add a custom category, type the new name in one of the blank fields in the "Custom Categories" section and press the save button.

Assigning a post to categories

When composing or editing a post, pull down the category list dropdown menu on the post screen to choose categories.

Assign the post to a single category by selecting the category and saving the post.

Assign the post to more than one category by choosing Assign Multiple Categories from the dropdown. This will open the category list where you can select multiple categories.

Click "set" after choosing the categories and save the changes to the post.

You can see the categories that a post is assigned to on the "List All Posts" management screen and view posts by category using the filter options.

Displaying categories on your site

Show the category or categories that a post is assigned to by selecting a post footer that displays the category name. This is on the Design -> Content page for your weblog, in the Weblog Post Footer dropdown.

Choose a footer that has Category showing in it and save the change. This will display the category name after each post, and with category archiving enabled the category name will turn into a link to that category page. You can turn on category archiving on the Configure -> Archiving page for your weblog if it isn't already.

For the sidebar of your page, you can check the "Categories" box in the Your Sidebar Content section of Design -> Content save the change. This will list your categories that have posts and each will link to the archive page for the category if category archiving is enabled for the weblog.

A list of your categories is also displayed on the master archive page for your weblog if you have category archiving enabled.

Comments

[filchyboy]

We need to be able to run RSS files (or index.rdf as it were) per category.

Also I need to be able to use unique templates per category so, for instance, I can have category 'foo' rendered with design 'foo' and category 'bar' rendered with design 'bar.'

Any thoughts?

[Brenna]

Category RSS Feeds -

You can set up category feeds using the advanced templates in Pro. Copy the RSS Template over into a new index template for each of your categories. You could name the output file the name of the category, like books.rdf.

Then change the two instances of MTEntries in the template:
<MTEntries lastn="15">

To filter by category:
<MTEntries lastn="15" category="Books">

Do this for each of the categories.

Category Styles -

You can set up different styles for your categories using the advanced templates too. Change the link for the stylesheet in the Category Archives template so it links to a stylesheet named the same as the category.

So, instead of:
<$MTBlogURL$>styles.css

Use the tag for the category name (in a category archive) like this:
<$MTBlogURL$><$MTArchiveTitle dirify="1"$>.css

Then create the stylesheets for each of the categories as additional index templates. The output file for each should be the name of the category. For example, books.css. The dirify automatically makes the category name with lower case letters and underscores for spaces, so "Food and Drink" would become "food_and_drink". If you're unsure what to name the matching stylesheet for the category then place the <$MTArchiveTitle dirify="1"$> tag into your template somewhere so that it prints this as text on the page for you to see.

[Phil Wolff]

Can you automate the category RSS features? Roll it in to the category creation and maintenace features?

[Nabeel]

Posting to multiple categories is an excellent feature, but being able to carry categories amungst different blogs might be key as well. If I have 4 blogs and a category overlaps I should have the option to pick it up in both blogs.

[Manohar]

Categories are very important, but what I'm missing is a way to customize the archive page for each category. For eg, I need a way to clearly indicate that a specific category is being viewed currently ( when someone selects a specific category link on the sidebar and is lead to the list of archives of that category ). To see what I am referring to, go to parmanu.typepad.com and look at the "sections" part on the side-bar : each links to another page which describes the section header, and lists content of only that section in the sidebar.

I've faked this by creating a weblog for each section, and creating a typelist with links to the different weblogs ( sections ). It would be really nice if the categories feature can provide this additional flexibility.

In general, if you say that TypePad is a "personal publishing service", then you must support write ups which are not exactly blogs. On my site, I'd like to have a sections on Literature, Technology, Travel etc etc, but this is not currently possible. Providing more customizing flexibility with the categories feature is one way to achieve this end.

[Phil Wolff]

Maybe breadcrumbs would be useful in Manohar's example. Home > CategoryName. or Home > Archives > 2003 > October > 25.

[monique]

Is there a way to Exclude a category in Typepad? I would like to have a daily photo that appears at the top of my blog. I already know how to get that particular category to sit alone at the top of the page, but the entry itself is duplicating in the main blog. Any way to have that category excluded from the entry listings on the index page?