If you want to track categories on your WordPress site, then you need to use Google Tag Manager.

Method 1: Tracking Traffic with Google Tag Manager

The Google Tag Manager for WordPress plugin is a tool that allows you to easily add snippets of code using a container system into your WordPress website.

This prevents you from having to do it all manually. Multiple containers are also supported, giving you tons of functionality and ability. All of this can be done right from the WordPress admin dashboard of your website.

Simply put, the plugin complements your GTM setup by pushing page metadata and user information into the so-called data layer. There is quite a bit of basic data included within the plugin. Some of this includes:

• Page and Post Titles
• Post and Page Dates
• Page and Post Category Names
• Post and Page Tag Names
• Author ID and Names
• Page ID
• Post Types
• Logged In Status
• Site Search Data

The plugin gives you everything you need and more to properly track categories in WordPress. It is lightweight and pretty easy to set up. It is also compatible with just about every WordPress theme and plugin out there, so getting it to run with whatever you have should not be a problem.

Let’s take a look at how to install the plugin and then we will go over it together.

Step 1: Install and Activate Plugin

In order to properly track categories in WordPress using Google Tag Manager, you first need to install and activate the plugin. You can do this from the plugins page of your WordPress admin dashboard. Simply search for the relevant plugin.

Once the plugin has been installed and activated, click on Settings > Google Tag Manager. This will take you to the main configuration page for the plugin.

From here, you can start the setup process. Let’s go over it together and see what we have to work with.

Step 2: Configure Google Tag Manager for WordPress

When you get to the main configuration page for the plugin, you will see eight main tabs. These include:

• General
• Basic Data
• Events
• Scroll Tracking
• Blacklist Tags
• Integration
• Advanced
• Credits

We will go through these together in just a second. However, before you set up all your options preferences and go through the tabs to track categories, you first need to enter your GTM ID.

You’ll need the Google Tad Manager ID number in order for the plugin to work correctly.

Now that you have done that, let’s go through the rest of the tabs together.

General

Setup all your general options here. This is where you will enter the GTM ID number and also make the choice as to where container code placement will be.

Basic Data

This is where you will enter all the basic data needed to properly track categories. Under this tab, you will see a set of sub-tabs. These include:

• Posts
• Search
• Visitors
• Google Ads
• Browser/OS/Device
• Weather & Geo Data
• Site

Make sure you click through all of these sub-tabs and setup everything how you see fit.

Events

You will be able to set your configurations for different event styles through this tab. Again, this is another tab that contains sub-tabs. These include:

• General Events
• Media Events
• Deprecated

Visit them all and set them up how you feel is best for your website.

Scroll Tracking

You can set tags up to send data on how visitors scroll through your pages. This is where you enter the configuration options for that.

Blacklist Tags

Control all your tags and macros in this area of the setup. There are actually quite a few checkboxes to go through here. Be thorough in your setup process. Also, visit both sub-tabs:

• Blacklist Tags
• Blacklist Macros

Integration

The Google Tag Manager plugin can be easily integrated with some of the most popular plugins available in WordPress today. These include:

• WooCommerce
• Contact Form 7
• Google Optimize
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

Make sure to visit all of those sub-tabs and integrate anything relevant currently running on your website.

Advanced

These are some advanced setting options for the plugin. More than likely, none of this needs to be changed. If you do change something, just make sure you know what you are doing. Some of these changes you may make and then not know how to undo them after the fact.

If you get caught or confused, ask the plugin developer for help by going to the credits tab on the configuration page.

Credits

The credits tab simply lists credits from people who work on the plugin and maintain it. You can visit the plugin author links if you so choose.

Step 3: Save Changes

All that’s left is to save your changes. Google analytics should be tracking the specific categories from WordPress.

This can help gain all kinds of insights into what your visitors are finding the most valuable topics on your website. Just make sure you use the data to keep delivering what they want.

Method 2: Track Categories with WP Statistics

Another method for tracking categories in WordPress is through WP Statistics. In this case, you won’t have to worry about setting up Google tags to track data.

It’s another free plugin that can provide insights directly from your WordPress admin panel.

Perhaps the biggest difference, though, is how much more detailed Google tags are in terms of exact metrics, such as social referrals and on-page time. WP Statistics doesn’t have this information.

Step 1: Install WP Statistics

When it comes to tracking various statistics in WordPress, you can’t go wrong with WP Statistics. It’s a great alternative if you weren’t a fan of the last plugin. It can track just about anything and won’t have an issue tracking category-specific data.

Similar to the last plugin you need to start off by installing and activating the plugin.

Step 2: Track Categories

The great thing about WP Statistics is that it is ready to go upon installation. As you might expect it will take a bit of time for the plugin to populate the data, and that time frame is different for every website.

Simply click on the Statistics and select the Categories option.

Here you will find all of the statistics related to your website’s categories. At the top, use the dropdown menu to select what category data you want to look at.

Then just click on the “Select” button and the results will appear. And that’s really it. You can view the amount of traffic it gets, how many posts are under the category, and view this information during specific time periods.

Just remember that this plugin goes way beyond just categories. You can track just anything on your WordPress site with it.

What is Google Tag Manager?

Google Tag Manager is a free tool provided by Google that allows people to implement and deploy marketing tags by using coding snippets. You can do this on a website or mobile app without having to modify any code.

You need to use GTM for WordPress tracking of categories. When this is done correctly, information from one data source like your website is shared with another data source like analytics. This is very useful if you have a lot of tags to manage and want to track multiple categories.

Again, you have to add some of your own code snippets, but modifying any existing code is not needed. The GTM interface can add and update Google Ads, Google Analytics, Floodlight, and non-Google tags. This reduces errors and allows you to properly deploy tags on your site quickly and easily.

Furthermore, the use of a solid plugin makes the entire process even easier. The main issue with Google Tag Manager in the past is that you had to place snippets of code within your website. The setup could be a little tedious and confusing if you were not familiar with how to do it.

Now, there is a much easier way to set up a specific category for visitor traffic tracking. Today I am going to show you how to track categories in WordPress using Google Tag Manager and a plugin.

Let’s take a look at the plugin in question and see exactly what it does.

Track Categories to Learn More About Your Audience

In the past, setting up Google Tags on your website could be done, but it was much more difficult to navigate. Furthermore, it was very time-consuming. The process worked well, but unless you were a developer, it could be quite tasking.

Now, you have the ability to track categories with tags using a plugin. While there is still some setup involved, the overall process is much simpler and easier to understand.

The plugin takes you through the process step-by-step and will give you an amazing tool for tracking categories using the Google Tag Manager tool. Using it properly will not only help you understand a more filtered set of analytics, but you can then use this information in marketing for your website or business and drive more traffic.

Have you used this plugin before? Do you prefer tracking categories the manual way instead of by placing in your own code snippets were needed across the website?

The post How to Track Traffic for Specific Categories in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

I like a descriptive, declarative URL myself, so I’m generally interested in trimming away unnecessary or irrelevant bits. It isn’t always possible to remove variables or other functional elements from a URL, but when it is, it can be in your interest to get rid of them.

One thing that happens in WordPress is “/category” is added to your category URLs if you do not specify a “Category base” in Settings > Permalinks. So for my demonstration site categories, I see:

[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]https://www.ggexample.com/category/photography/[/ht_message]

We’re going to use the Remove Category URL plugin to remove /category from the URL. When we’re finished, /category will be removed from our site URLs:

[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]https://www.ggexample.com/photography/[/ht_message]

This plugin only affects category URLs. Post and page URLS are not changed.

Installing the Remove Category URL Plugin

Log into your WordPress admin panel.

In the left column navigation, mouse over the “Plugins” link and click the “Add New” link.

In the “Search plugins…” box, enter “Remove Category URL.”

Once you have located the plugin, click the “Install Now” button.

Click the “Activate” button.

Configuring the Plugin

The plugin starts working as soon as it’s installed and activated. There is no configuration necessary.

Eliminating the Plugin, but Still Removing the “Category” Portion of the URL

The Remove Category URL plugin does exactly what we want it to do, no muss, no fuss. But what if you want to remove /category from your WordPress URL without a plugin?

I’m afraid I have to be the bearer of bad news and tell you that it’s no longer possible to do a simple configuration change to remove /category. You might see a lot of articles out there about using a dot in the Permalinks “Category base” field, but since WordPress 5.x, that workaround doesn’t do the trick.

There are complicated functions.php changes that may still work, but it seems a long way around to create a child theme and add 20 lines of code to functions.php to do something that a plugin can do in a few seconds. So honestly, I didn’t even test them. It would be like using a container ship to deliver a pizza, and no one would do that, right?

Well, Amazon might.

If you don’t want to install another plugin, but you already use Yoast SEO, you can remove /category from the URL in WordPress in the Yoast configuration.

Permalinks, in General, Are a Bigger Subject

We’ve just touched on a single aspect of permalink management, removing /category from the URL in WordPress. But it’s well worth your time to look a bit deeper and learn more about WordPress permalinks.

Whether cleaning up your URLs is beneficial to SEO depends on how messy they are to begin with. But for human-readability purposes, a descriptive URL will always work in your favor.

Have you delved into WordPress permalinks, or do you leave the default configuration in place? Have you ever made permalink/URL changes across your site and seen an SEO benefit? Let me know in the comments.

The post How to Remove the Category from a URL in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

The truth is that the space on your homepage is valuable, you need to use it to show off your best and newest content to visitors. Categories are probably better off in another area or their own dedicated page if you have a lot of them.

This is especially true if you spend time changing the layout of the homepage to suit a specific aesthetic. You don’t want your hard work to be marred by an extremely long list of categories.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to remove a category from the WordPress homepage without knowing a single line of code.

Why Hide Categories in WordPress?

As websites grow over time, they start adding new categories for their content. And after many years, you can find websites with over one hundred categories, especially on larger websites that try to cater to a diverse audience.

And this is a smart move. Categories help you organize your content so that visitors can find it easier. So why hide them?

Once there are a lot of categories, showing one giant list of them on a page not dedicated to them starts to look…ridiculous. Essentially, the page will continue well past the content on the homepage, which will just have visitors scrolling down a list of categories with nothing else on the page.

And I bet you’ve actually seen this in the past, as it is common on older websites. But make no mistake, it is a bad design choice.

How to Hide Categories on the WordPress Homepage

Today, I’ll show what Ultimate Category Excluder can do for you and why you may want to give it a try. It gives you an easy option to make WordPress exclude a category from the homepage with just a couple of clicks of the mouse.

It also allows you to hide categories on feeds as well. Thus, it can be a versatile tool to take advantage of.

Step 1: Install Ultimate Category Excluder

Let’s start by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for Ultimate Category Excluder in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the Ultimate Category Excluder plugin and click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Step 2: Hide WordPress Categories

The plugin is very straightforward. You just need to go to the settings page and select which categories to remove from the homepage. This also gives you the flexibility to display your most popular categories.

Note: The plugin uses the term front page, which just refers to whatever page you have set as the homepage.

Go to Settings and click on the Category Excluder option.

On this screen, you can choose which categories you want to show. You also have the option to exclude categories from feeds, archives, and the search function of WordPress.

For instance, what if you have a separate category RSS feed and don’t want it to show in another? This tool may help keep the feeds and category content organized and set apart.

Click the checkbox of the category to remove it from the front page. There is also a second checkbox to exclude it from feeds.

Scroll to the bottom of the list and click on the “Update” button.

Now, those categories you selected are no longer visible from the homepage. Congratulations!

You can come back to this section last any time and update what categories are visible. It is beneficial to regularly update this list to keep it relavant.

Other Plugins to Hide Categories in WordPress

While Ultimate Category Excluder works well for this purpose, perhaps you want something that better fits your development. And that’s one of the awesome things about WordPress: tens of thousands of plugins to choose from.

Here are a few other tools that will help you hide categories on the homepage of WordPress.

Collapsing Categories List

Collapsing Categories List gives you several options for customizing your archives in WordPress. Not only can you hide several categories, but you can also remove links and collapse subcategories by default.

Most of the features for this tool are available from the Widgets screen in WordPress.

Category and Subcategory List Widget

If you want to add a bit more flair to your list, the Category and Subcategory List Widget is a fun option to consider. You can hide empty categories, display custom icons to each and it is compatible with custom post types.

It’s an option that may add a bit of visual appeal to your sidebar.

Front Page Category

The Front Page Category plugin is a bit basic when it comes to features. It simply removes categories you choose from the front page of your website. If you just want a tool that offers this feature, this plugin is easy to use.

You can access the category options from the Customizer in WordPress and uncheck the categories you don’t want to show.

It’s Good Design to Hide Categories on Your WordPress Homepage

There could be a number of reasons why you would want to remove certain categories from the homepage in WordPress. Whether they are empty or you just have too many different elements, it’s all about keeping the site clean and user-friendly.

For example, if you cover movies, you may want to limit the categories on the homepage to the most recent or popular releases. This will make them much more useful to visitors. Just be sure to have a full list of them somewhere on a dedicated page.

Customize the appearance of your site and keep your audience engaged. You don’t want your list of categories to seem overwhelming to visitors.

How many categories do you have set up on your website? How do you customize the category list to make it more unique or attractive?

The post How to Hide Categories from the Homepage in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

If you have already published a ton of posts but realize you need to move them, let’s take a look at how to bulk move WordPress posts to categories and tags.

Bulk Move WordPress Posts to Categories and Tags

To accomplish moving WordPress posts to categories and tags let’s take a look at a great little plugin that can help you easily do all the work that is needed.

First, you want to install and activate the Bulk Move plugin.

The Bulk Move plugin allows you to move WordPress posts in bulk from one category, tag or custom taxonomy to another. It also allows you to disassociate posts from a certain category, tag or custom taxonomy.

Performing these types of functions can be very valuable for the overall SEO of your WordPress website.

After you have installed and activated the plugin go to Tools > Bulk Move to bulk move WordPress posts to categories and tags.

Upon arrival to the Bulk Move plugin screen you will see a few different options. Let’s go over them.

The plugin will allow you to move all your posts from one category to another. All you have to do is select a category you want to move in the left drop-down menu and select the category you want to bulk move those WordPress posts to in the right drop-down menu.

When you have made your selections and are ready, click on the “Bulk Move” button and the plugin will automatically transfer all posts from the current category to the new one you have selected.

The plugin also assists you in moving WordPress posts between tags. The process is the same. Select the tag you want to move in the left drop down box and select the tag you want your bulk WordPress posts moved to in the right drop down.

Finally, you can also bulk move category by tag and bulk move by custom taxonomy.

What to Remember

Please make note of the fact that once you bulk move WordPress posts to categories and tags they cannot be retrieved back. So make sure your moves are what you want.

The Bulk Move plugin has expanded its function nicely over the last year or so. It used to only allow bulk moves by categories and tags.

However, as explained above you can also bulk move category by tag and bulk move by custom taxonomy.

Bulk Moves Without a Plugin

Surprisingly enough bulk moving WordPress posts to categories can be done in the back end of your WordPress website. That being said, unless I am mistaken, you cannot bulk move WordPress posts to tags without the use of a plugin or code. You can add or delete tags, but not bulk move.

WordPress has a built-in feature that comes in very handy. Most people don’t even know about it.

The main problem with this is you get into an area where you may need to change slugs and permalinks, so it can be a little trickier. However, let’s take a quick look at how to do this.

First, create your new desired category. Then go to your “All Posts” page and perform the following steps.

1. Click on the current category you are using that you want to add the second one to.
2. It will list all posts assigned to Learn WordPress. Click on the box called “Title.”
3. Go to Bulk Actions and select “Edit”. Click on Apply.

You see that we can actually perform a lot of bulk changes in the current window but we are only changing WordPress categories this time around. Make note of it for other uses though.

Other Plugin Options

Here are some other plugin options to consider as well for moving WordPress posts, dealing with categories, tags, taxonomies, and merges.

Term Management Tools gives you the ability to reorganize your tags and categories. It simply adds new options to the Bulk Actions dropdown on term management pages. These new options include:

• Merge – combine two or more terms into one
• Set parent – set the parent for one or more terms (for hierarchical taxonomies)
• Change taxonomy – convert terms from one taxonomy to another

I hope this article has given you some options and choices when it comes to having to bulk move WordPress posts to categories and tags.

Have you had to bulk move your WordPress posts before? Did you find it challenging or easy to get the process done?

The post How To Bulk Move WordPress Posts to Categories and Tags appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Which is why many who operate multi-author sites will set WordPress to restrict an author to a specific category. It’s all about putting people into their primary roles and benefiting from their strengths.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to restrict author posting in WordPress to their preferred custom category.

How is Setting Author Category Restrictions Helpful?

By restricting author categories in WordPress, you are keeping certain writers contained within their role of expertise. It also helps prevent misplacing content.

For instance, let’s say you have an expert WordPress writer who knows nothing about Joomla. Would you be comfortable letting him or her write about something they know nothing about?

Perhaps you want to prevent a WordPress article from appearing in the Joomla category.

It all comes down to keeping your authors efficient and the website clean and organized.

Using Author Category

Today I’ll focus on using the Author Category plugin. It’s a bit old and outdated, but I’ve verified it to work with WordPress 4.9 with no problem.

However, I would like to point out that using older plugins may put your site at risk. Sometimes older plugins will lack proper development which provide exploits for bots and hackers.

On the other hand, this particular plugin is used by several thousand active websites. It appears to be safe and functional.

Setting Up Author Category

Install and activate, “Author Category.”

Click the “Users” option on the left of the WordPress dashboard.

From the Users screen, select an author who does not have admin privileges. This plugin does not restrict categories in WordPress for admins.

Scroll down to “Author Category.” It should be right under the user’s avatar image and account management.

Hold CTRL on the keyboard and select the categories. These will be the sections this particular author can post content.

Click the “Update User” button on the bottom of the profile page.

Now, your author will only have access to those categories.

Note that all the categories your author has access to will be checked by default. This means he or she will publish this particular post to all of them.

The author can then uncheck the unneeded categories.

What if you want the author to select a category instead of all of them being checked?

To disable the all-selected option in this plugin, go to Users and click, “Author Category.”

You’ll see a single option to “Check none by default.” Click this box and then “Save Changes” on the right.

Now your author will have to select a specific category for every post he or she creates.

This is helpful to keep the site clean and organized according to content.

Restricting Author Post in WordPress is Helpful

For multi-author sites, it’s often beneficial to restrict author posting. It helps the individual focused on specific content and prevents mistakes. Think of it as a way to keep your writers productive in a topic they both enjoy and show expertise.

How do you manage your authors on the website? How many authors do you have helping you create content?

The post How to Set WordPress to Restrict an Author to a Category appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Creating categories is a good way to keep the content organized according to topic. But it’s also a good way to show your readers what’s available. He or she might show interest in other materials you write.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to make WordPress display recent posts by category in the sidebar. It’s a quick addition that may help boost audience engagement of your site.

Using Category Posts Widget

Categories and tags are built-in elements of WordPress that not only keep content organized, but they also play a part in search engine optimization. This is aside from how helpful they are in terms of helping people find specific content according to topic.

Today, I’m going to demonstrate the Category Posts Widget plugin. It’s a free tool that is easy to set up and add to virtually any website with a sidebar.

Install and activate, “Category Posts Widget.”

Go to Appearance and click, “Widgets.”

To display recent posts by category on a page, we’re going to use a new widget in the website. And although the default WordPress “Categories” tool is useful, what we’ll install has greater control.

Drag and drop the “Category Posts” widget into your sidebar. Not all themes have the same sidebar segments, so you’ll need to arrange the widget according to where you want to show your posts.

Now, let’s take a look at the different areas of this feature. You can expand any of the sections in this widget by clicking the label.

Title

In title, you can change the header of the widget showing on your website. This is the short piece of text that displays above the function from the frontend of your site. You have control to hide the title, change its name and even add a link. This is useful if you have a specific page to show your content.

Filter

The Filter area gives you options to show specific categories, the status of the posts that are displayed, how many and a way to sort the content. You can also change the sort order and exclude certain posts such as the one the visitor is actually looking at.

Post Details

Post details governs over the widgets layout. From here, you can change the template around and the actual dimensions allowed. For instance, I know my template handles 300px wide material, so I could change the thumbnail width to coincide with the theme’s sidebar.

General

General options allow you to disable CSS or fonts. You can also hide the widget if there are no recent posts for the specific category. This is helpful if you don’t have a lot of content for a specific section as visitors won’t see the same “recent” post weeks or even months later.

Footer

In the Footer, you can add linkable text and a URL for any webpage you wish. For example, you could advertise guest blogging for your site with a link under your most recent content. It can also lead to a landing page for a product or other service.

Once you’re done making your adjustments, click the “Save” button on the bottom right.

What if you want to show the most recent few posts in each category on the same page?

One of the nice things about widgets is that you can place as many as you want. So if you have five categories you want to show separately, you can drag and drop the “Category Posts” widget to the side bar five times and make specific adjustments.

Boost Visitor Engagement

You have access to many tools for showing posts from a specific category in WordPress through plugins. This is just one example of how you can further engage your visitors by giving them something else to read. All it takes is the right feature and a bit of imagination.

What kind of things do you add to the sidebar to engage your audience? How many categories does your site center around?

The post How to Set WordPress to Display Recent Posts by Category appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Unfortunately, WordPress only provides built-in support for both of these taxonomies for posts. Thus, you are going to need to get creative for your pages.

Luckily, WordPress is home to thousands of plugins and they can solve this issue for you. Making your content easy to organize and sort helps everybody and there is no reason not to do so.

Today, I will demonstrate how to use categories and tags for pages in WordPress by using the x plugin.

Installing Add Category to Pages

The Add Category to Pages plugin will do exactly what you want it to do. And don’t let the name deceive you, it also gives you the option to add tags to pages. This also adds the option to filter your pages based on the category, which will make it easy to find specific content.

Note: If you only have a few pages, adding this feature is unnecessary. Since adding a lot of plugins can slow down your website, it is best to only add what you need. Although, speed should not be an issue with proper web hosting.

Start by clicking on Plugins and selecting the Add New option on the left-hand admin panel.

Search for Add Category to Pages in the available search box. This will pull up additional plugins that you may find helpful.

Scroll down until you find the Add Category to Pages plugin and click on the “Install Now” button and activate the plugin for use.

Categories and Tags for Pages in WordPress

This plugin works upon activation and there are no settings to change. And if you are familiar with how categories and tags work for posts, you already know how to do it for pages, since it is exactly the same.

In fact, they even share the same pool of categories.

On the left-hand admin panel click on Pages. Normally, you would only see the All Pages and Add New options. However, because you have installed this plugin, you will now see Categories and Tag options.

Click on either the Categories or Tags option. This will pull up the same categories or tags section you would see on a post.

Adding taxonomies is exactly like adding them to post content in WordPress. You should see all of your current categories and tags that you have been using for post content on the right-hand side.

You can use them for your pages or create new ones exclusively for them. The latter option is my personal recommendation, but it is up to you. Take a few moments to decide and create what categories or tags you will need.

Note: You can also create a category while editing a page.

Once you have created any categories or tags you may need, it is time to add them to your pages.

Adding Taxonomies to Pages in WordPress

Unfortunately, you probably already have a good amount of pages, otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be looking for a way to sort them. Sadly, you are going to have to go into each page and assign them a category or tag.

This can take some time if you have a lot, but the actual process is very quick. It is different depending on if you are using the Gutenberg or Classic editor, so I will share both ways.

Gutenberg

On any existing page, click on the Settings button and select the Document tab.

You will now see a Categories and Tag option appear in the settings. Simply click on one of them and you will be presented with the same options as a post.

Choose a category for your page.

Click on the “Update” button and you can move on to the next page. Just make sure not go too fast and put the wrong page under the wrong category. Otherwise, you are just creating more work for yourself.

Classic Editor

Go to any existing page or create a new page to begin adding them. You will now see the Categories and Tags boxes. They should look familiar because they are exactly the same as their post counterparts.

Simply choose which Categories and Tags you would like the page to use. Make sure they are appropriate and that they make sense. For example, don’t use a Cats tag on a page about Dogs, it is misleading to visitors.

Click on the “Update” button to save the changes. Repeat this step for every page.

Filtering Pages By Category

Once you have categories and tags set on your pages, I am sure you want to know how to filter them. And once again, this works the exact same way as posts do.

Simply select the category you want to filter for and click on the “Filter” button.

Congratulations, you have successfully added taxonomies to your pages in WordPress. This should help you easily organize your pages, but if you only have a handful, it probably won’t make it any easier than before.

Why Add Categories and Tags to Pages

Pages are designed to help visitors by providing specific information or help them find specific content on your website.

For a normal blog, you would probably not have many pages other than the more basic ones like Contact Us, About Us, Homepage, Privacy Policy, etc. The majority of your content will be in the form of a post and as such, a blog will not have much use for page categories.

However, let’s say your website is focused on business. Well, things become a lot more complicated. In many cases, you will have multiple sales pages to cover the various products and services your business offers.

In these cases, it can become tricky to locate the correct pages for specific things, as such, creating a category for them can help significantly.

For example, let’s say you have promotional pages for specific pieces of furniture. You can help customers and editors locate them quicker by creating categories like couches, tables, recliners, etc.

Thus, it can be very convenient to add categories to your WordPress pages.

Make Your Website Easy to Navigate

Organizing your content benefits both web developers and visitors alike. It saves precious time when trying to find the content you are looking for. Many visitors do not want to spend a lot of time on websites they are visiting for the first time.

Thus, it is important that a website is easy to use for everyone who visits it.

This includes advanced computer users and people accessing a website for the first time. As a result, your website can be used by a larger audience of people, which can help you gain traffic. Of course, just because a visitor can find your content does not mean they will like it.

Thus, you will still need to make sure the pages you create are of high quality.

How many pages do you have on your website? Do you feel that categories and tags have helped you organize your pages?

The post How to Use Categories and Tags for Pages in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Using different templates for your categories makes each one feel unique to your visitors and shows just how creative your website is. Keep in mind that using category templates is different from styling your categories. Today, I will demonstrate how to add and use category templates in WordPress.

What Are and Why Should You Use Category Templates

A category template allows for unique features and designs to be active for a single category, while other categories may use different templates. For example, if you have a dogs category, you may have a template that focuses on dog specific items like bones, paw prints, and dogs themselves.

Using category templates can really help your website stand out from the thousands of competitors you will face. It makes each category look meaningful and helps each piece of content stand out from one another. Being unique goes a long way when your website is one in a million. Every design choice matters and needs to be carefully made and be meaningful.

How to Add and Use Category Templates in WordPress

Today, I will demonstrate how to add and use category templates in WordPress. Before you begin this tutorial, you must take the time to create categories and add content to them. Adding category templates to WordPress requires you to edit files in the backend of your website. WordPress uses a hierarchy system to determine what template to load. By default, WordPress will use the theme’s templates, but by adding custom templates, WordPress will load and use those first.

This process may be slightly different depending on the theme you are using. You should also consider creating a backup of your website before beginning. This will ensure that you can fix your website if something goes wrong.

Finding Out the Current Hierarchy

You must first determine what your theme is loading. If you have never used custom templates before most likely your theme is reading the category.php file. If this is absent then the archive.php file will contain the information, but if this is also missing then the index.php file will be used. The key is to add a file that will be read before these.

For reference, here is what the template hierarchy system looks like in WordPress.

1. category-slug.php
2. category-id.php
3. category.php
4. archive.php
5. index.php

The files are read from 1 to 5 and if a file is not found it will move down.

Let’s start by logging into the cPanel and clicking on the File Manager option. The File Manager will allow you to access all of the files related to your website.

You need to locate your current theme’s folder because the files you need will be located within it. Click on the public_html directory, then click on the wp-content folder. Inside of this folder, you will find all of the content related to your website. Click on the themes folder and enter the folder of the theme you are currently using.

Inside of this folder, you will see important files like the functions.php file, which is one of the most edited files in WordPress. Look through all of the folders and look for the categories.php, archives.php, and index.php files. In my case, I only had the archives.php and index.php files.Since archives.php is currently the highest ranked file, according to the hierarchy system, it will be read first, so I must introduce a file above that.

Adding a Category Template

Now that you know the current hierarchy you are ready to add a template. Alternatively, you could just add a category-slug.php file since it is always the first in the hierarchy. Make sure you name the file appropriately, for example, a category of “Dogs” with a slug of “dogs”, means that it will be named category-dogs.php. Make sure to confirm that your slug name is correct, or set one up if you have not already.

We need to add a new file by clicking on the “+ File” button.

A pop-up window will appear. Name the file appropriately and click on the “Create New File” button. If you do not name it correctly or misspell something, it will not work.

Your file in now created, but it is empty. Here is an example of a category-slug template file. This is only an example and must be edited to work correctly for your website: [ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]

[/ht_message]

Once you have set up your category template file, click on the “Save Changes” button to finish.

Congratulations, your website will now load the category template whenever a piece of content is under your specified tag. You can add multiple templates, but make sure they are unique enough to make it worth your time.

Fully Customize Your Website

Customizing your website is very important and helps your website stand out from the competition. Customization can range from category templates all the way down to the color of your theme. How your website looks is almost as important as how your website runs. Many visitors will not try a website if it does not look good.

How many category templates have you created? How unique are your templates from each other?

The post How to Add and Use Category Templates in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Don’t worry, visitors and search engines will still see the permalink correctly if you changed it.

In some instances, you may need to find these ID numbers for various forms of content. Today, I’m going to show you how to check for these numbers and where you can find them.

Checking for User ID

Click the “Users” function from the left column.

Click into a name to make edits.

In the address bar of your browser, you’ll see a line of text. The number you’re looking for is after the “user_ID=” portion.

What if you need the Author ID? You find this in a similar fashion. Instead of clicking on the name of a user, click on the number of posts on the far right.

This will show a complete list of all the articles the user has submitted into WordPress. In the address bar, you’ll see a number after the “author=”. This is the author ID.

Checking for a Page or Post ID

Page and Post IDs are virtually identical when looking for them. The only difference is one says “page” while the other says “post.” For this example, I’m looking for a post ID.

Click the option for Posts from the left. This will also work if you click on Pages.

Click into the title of a post or page you want the ID for.

In the address bar, you’ll see a number after the “post=” text. This is the post ID number. It will look similar if you’re looking at a page except it will says, “page=.”

Checking for Category ID

To find an ID of a specific category, go to Posts and click, “Categories.”

Click into a category to edit it.

The category ID is the number after, “category&tag_ID=”. This is how WordPress handles the taxonomy of content in the system. This is not the same as a “tag” you would use to mark your content as in the tag cloud.

Checking for Comment ID

Perhaps you need the comment ID number. Click the Comments function from the left.

Click Edit of the comment you want to view.

The ID is the number after the “&c=”.

Checking for Tag ID

Like Categories, Tags is located in the “Posts” section of WordPress. These are used to connect certain articles together, kind of like keywords. With a click of the mouse, visitors can see all the content related to a specific tag.

To find the ID number of these, go to Posts and click, “Tags.”

Click the name of a tag to open it. It’s similar to how the category section above works.

The tag ID number in WordPress is after the “tag_ID=” in the URL.

Access to Everything

WordPress gives you access to anything you need regarding your website. From finding specific ID numbers to customizing lines of code, it’s highly flexible. Learn more about what WordPress hosting can do for you and benefit from one of the most popular management systems on the Internet.

How often do you need the user ID or other elements when building your website? How many categories or tags do you use in your content?

The post How to Find User, Post, Category, Comments or Tag IDs in WordPress appeared first on GreenGeeks.

WordPress makes up more than 25% of all websites and millions of websites are created every year. There are not as many themes as there are websites, which makes customizing a theme very important. It helps you stand out and in some cases customizing the theme will make it unrecognizable, which is a good thing. Today, I will demonstrate how to style categories in WordPress.

How Can Styling Categories in WordPress Make your Website Unique

When you install a theme, it is in its most basic state because the theme’s developers have no idea how you will use it. Every web developer is different and has their own style and themes allow you to add your unique style to them. Categories let visitors know what they will find or should expect to see. A smart web developer will use categories to their advantage. Styling them will enhance your visitor’s experience.

Whether you are going to style an individual category in WordPress or every category, you need to have a clear goal. Keep in mind there is no guidebook on how to style correctly and what looks good. What’s most important is listening to visitors’ feedback and making changes as needed, but keep in mind that you cannot please everyone.

How to Style Categories in WordPress

Today, I will demonstrate how to style categories in WordPress. The process is not hard and will not require any additional plugins. You will need access to your cPanel, which is provided by your web hosting plans when you create an account. There are multiple ways to style categories in WordPress, but we will focus on using a single category template.

WordPress themes will get displayed based on the template hierarchy. For categories, in particular, WordPress will read the category.php file. This stores the template that WordPress will use on a page with this category. So if you want to create a custom template for another category you need to make a category-mycategory.php file. This will tell WordPress to use that template when the mycategory category is used. It’s a very simple process, and I will walk you through it.

Let’s start by logging into the cPanel and clicking on the File Manager option. The File Manager will allow you to access all of the files related to your website.

The first thing you need to do is search for the categories.php file. By default, there should be one located in the wp-includes folder. Click on the public_html directory. Click on the wp-includes folder. Right-click on the categories.php file and select the “Edit” option.

A popup window will appear asking you to click on the “Edit” button. Do it. The file will open in a new tab. Select everything inside of the file and copy it. Now you can close the tab.

You now need to locate your themes files. Click on the public_html directory. Click on the wp-content folder. Click on the themes folder. Click on the folder of the theme you are currently using. Once inside click the “+ File” button. A popup will appear asking you to enter a name. This is very important and must be spelled correctly, or it will not work. You need to name the file category-mycategory.php. Replace “mycategory” with the category you would like to style. Click on the “Create New File” button.

You should now see the file you created appear. Right-click the file and select the “Edit” option. Once it opens on a new tab paste the contents of the other categories.php file into it. Now you can freely edit this code, and it will only affect the category you have named in the file. Click on the “Save Change” button when you are done with the file.

Congratulations, you now know how to create a template for each category. You may repeat these steps for multiple categories. If you’re looking for a few ideas on ways that you can make this category page different, then try adding different widgets to your sidebars to give the pages a new look, maybe change the size of the page to full width, or simply change the color. There is an enormous amount of customization options available.

Another Method

This method requires you to add custom CSS to your website. Like template files, CSS files also follow a hierarchy and each category has its own CSS name associated with it. This name is usually category-mycategory where “mycategory” is the name of the category you are using. Here is a sample CSS you can add to your website (replace “ggexample.com” with your domain):[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]

body.category-mycategory {
background-color:#EEE;
background:url(“https://ggexample.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/background.jpg”) no-repeat fixed;
color:#FFFFFF;
}
.category-mycategory .site {
background:#232323;
}
.category-mycategory a {
color:#CCCCCC;
} [/ht_message]

Keep in mind this is just a sample you will need to change “mycategory” to whatever your category is called and feel free to change any other settings.

Stand Out From the Crowd

There are millions of websites created using WordPress, and it is hard to make your website feel unique, but you need to find a way. Without a doubt, thousands of websites will use the same theme, and the only thing that will make these websites stand out from each other is how you design your pages and the content on those pages. WordPress categories are used to help your visitors locate content, but they can be so much more when you style them.

You can make a category page look like a completely different website by customizing the look of it. For example, a category for gothic may have a much darker feeling that the rest of the website and the coloring and text options will be different from the rest of your website. As long as you listen to your visitors’ feedback, your website can only be improved from taking the time to customize it.

What theme are you currently using for WordPress? Did you decide to style a certain category differently based on its popularity?

The post How to Style WordPress Categories appeared first on GreenGeeks.