How to Impliment Catagories In Blogger

How Do You Make Categories In Blogger Blogs?

I have read and even been asked this questions myself. I have thought about this question a lot over the last year or so as I have built blogs using blogger. Today I want to share my thoughts and provide what I consider a solution to the question, "How do you create Categories in a blogger blog?"

Here is what you are going to need;

A blog with enough entries to be categorize.
Some knowledge of HTML.
An understanding of how your blog is formatted.

Terms I use in this "How To" and what they mean.

Post - An entry in your blog. Can be daily or could be any time frame that you make a new entry. The main characteristic is that it has a permalink that allows you to uniquely identify it from other post.

Category post - an entry or post in your blog that has links to other post in your blog that fall under the category that the post is for. A category post is an index of links in your blog that fall under that category.

For example, if you create a Category post called "blond jokes." Then this post will have links to all your blog entries (subject matter post) that are blond jokes or about blond jokes. And all your post that are about blond jokes can also link back to the Category post.

Subject Matter Post - an entry in you blog that needs to be categorized. It was written based on some subject matter that you want to be able to refer your readers to. Continuing with the example that I have been using, a blond joke would be a subject matter post.

Postdated - Postdating is the changing of the date of a post to make it appear as if it was an earlier post. Because category post are not really created to be read like other post in your blog, you can postdate them so that they are at the beginning of your blog. Where they will be out of the way. Like the index in a book, they can be the back matter of your blog.

Basic explanation of how this solution works. My idea is to (1) create a postdated category post (blog entry) for each category. In this new category post (2) place links to each post that relates to that category. Place a link in each post in your blog, for a given category back to the category post. Then modify the blog template to link to these new entries.

Steps to Implement Categories

1. Do a little planing. Create your list of Categories.

I want to use a Blogger Blog that I created to keep track of funny things that I read online and jokes that I get sent via email. I call this blog "Fitz Blog of Comedy." In my example I want to create the below categories;

blond jokes
jokes about animals
word play
puns

2. Sign into Blogger.

And select your blog.

3. Create Category Post.

Just like creating a new entry to your blog, create a new post with the title of the category. So for example to create a category post called "blond jokes" I create a post with that title.

(feel free to click on the links in step to go to any of the category post in my jokes blog above)

Make sure that when you save the post that you post date it. Give it a date that places it somewhere out of the way in your blog. In my case I choose to make my category post at the beginning of my blog.

4. Place links to the category post on your blog's side bar.

After creating all the category post on your list from step one, it is time to place links to these post on your sidebar. To create a link on the side bar to your category post you need to know the permalink to the item that you want to include in the category. Or another way of saying this, for the Blond Jokes Category, I need to know the permalink of the Blond jokes category post.

5. Place links from subject matter post to category post.

All the permalinks to every post in my blog that is a blond joke has a link on the blond jokes category post. To do this locate the permalink for the subject matter post and place it on the category post.

The permalink for various subject matter post is easy information to obtain. Go to each category post that you want to include on the category post and locate the permalink for that post.

6. Place a link on each subject matter post back to the category post

If you want readers to be able to go from each blond joke to the index of blond jokes. Then you can place a link on each post that is a blond joke back to the blond joke category post.

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blogger, categories, how to, tricks, tips, tools