Understanding Categories and Tags in WordPress

Anyone that is new to WordPress can at times, feel overwhelmed trying figure out how it works. What's a tag? What's a category? We'll take some time to explain the differences of each and what they are used for in WordPress.

WordPress Tags

Tags in the most basic sense are keywords for your posts. You can assign multiple tags to posts which can be helpful to visitors looking for related articles or searching your site. You also have the ability to use Tag Clouds through a widget to show various tags associated with your posts. Tags can be created when creating the post or by choosing Posts > Post Tags in your WordPress Dashboard:

WordPress Categories

Categories in WordPress are simple groupsing you create to organize related posts. Catgories can only be used in posts and not pages. It's best practice to create your categories prior to starting to create posts. However, you can create a new category anytime. 

WordPress offers the ability to setup sub-categories of any category you wish. This gives you the ability to add more precise organization to your posts. You can display your categories in your sidebar using a widget. Most themes usually have this set up by default. If not, there's plenty widgets to help you do so. You can create a manage your categories by selecting Psots > Categories in your WordPress Dashboard:

Link Categories

Link Categories are not the same as post categories. Link categories can be setup to organize your lists to other websites or blogs. These categories only apply to links and do not affect your post categories. To create or manage the categories for links select Links > Categories inside your WordPress Dashboard: