Groovy Sputum

Tags and Categories

I am fairly new to the blogging realm and so it is natural for me to have lots of unanswered questions. One question that is no longer a mystery is the difference between tags and categories. I used to think of them as one in the same with the differences being that there are more tags and that fonts on tag clouds get bigger the more times that tag appears. After doing some research and adding a nifty WordPress plugin called Simple Tags, I am pleased to say that you will now see a tag cloud on my site.

Here’s a great analogy when thinking about tags and categories: categories are analogous to the table of contents in the front of a book and tags are likened to a word index or glossary at the back of book. There may only be five or six chapters in a book, but key words may be used throughout. Keep in mind that the ultimate purpose of tags and categories is to aid readers in finding what they want to read. If a person wants to look generally at a topic, they should use categories. If someone wants to read about a specific topic, they should navigate using the tags.

Ideally, there should only be a dozen categories at most, but tags should be numerous. One programming blog I read recently had about 50 categories. I then looked at the tag cloud and discovered the same 50 words used there. I thought, what’s the point. If you are not going to differentiate between tags and categories, then why have them both.

So, if you want to read about my family, click on my family category. But if you want to specifically read about Valerie, you can click on her name in the tag cloud and filter out the post’s that don’t include her. Also, you may find that I wrote about Valerie in a post that didn’t fall into the family category.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle!