How to Add a Category in WordPress: Quick-Start Guide

Learning how to add categories in WordPress is easier than most beginners expect. It’s an essential step in organizing your content and improving site structure.

The WordPress add category feature works smoothly with most themes and enhances your content management system.

A well-planned category menu WordPress layout significantly improves user navigation. However, many beginners overlook the value of properly structured content taxonomies.

Whether you’re new to WordPress or an experienced user, this guide can help you make sure that your categories are correctly added and organized.

Let’s get started learning how to add a category in WordPress! 

Key Takeaways

• Create subcategories in WordPress by selecting the appropriate parent category.
• Add categories to WordPress pages using dedicated plugins.
• Display categories in a sidebar using WordPress categories widget.
• Organize content logically with WordPress category hierarchy system.
• Boost SEO performance through strategic category implementation.

Benefits of Adding Category in WordPress

Categorizing your content is crucial for maintaining a well-organized website. If you add category WordPress, it helps readers find what they need easily. WordPress makes this process simple with an easy category system.

You can create categories for posts and pages. This allows groups to share similar content. It improves site navigation and boosts user experience.

Understanding what is a category in WordPress helps maximize your site organization. Categories function as content containers grouping related posts together.

The WordPress categories widget displays these groupings in your sidebar. Categories improve internal linking, which boosts overall SEO performance.

Adding categories in WordPress offers several benefits that help organize and enhance your website’s content. Some of the key benefits include:

Improved Content Organization: 

Adding categories in WordPress helps organize your content by different topics. It keeps your content structured and easy to manage.

Visitors can find specific information without wasting time. It also makes your website easier to navigate for everyone.

Enhanced User Experience: 

Categories enable visitors to browse related articles or posts easily, leading to a better user experience.

By presenting relevant content, visitors are more likely to stay on your site longer, reducing bounce rates and increasing engagement.

SEO Optimization: 

Properly categorizing your content helps improve your website’s search engine optimization. Search engines understand your website structure better through accurate and meaningful WordPress subcategories.

This allows them to identify the relevance of each post to specific topics. It can also help your site rank higher in search engine results pages.

Efficient Content Management: 

With categories, you can efficiently manage and organize a large number of articles or posts. Bulk editing, updating, or applying changes to specific categories becomes much easier, saving time and effort in content management.

Targeted Advertising and Audience Segmentation: 

Categorizing your content allows you to target ads or promotions to specific sections of your audience. This increases the relevance of your advertisements, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates among your target audience.

How to Add a Category in WordPress

Adding a new category in WordPress while writing a post is a breeze. To start, if the sidebar doesn’t appear while editing a post, simply click on the gear icon located at the top right.

Next, navigate to the Post panel on the right-hand side and access the Categories tab. Here, you’ll find a variety of categories that you have previously created.

To create a new category, just click on the “Add New Category” link. Once you click on the link, two additional boxes will appear where you can input your category.

For a regular category, there is no need to select anything from the Parent Category dropdown menu. After you’ve entered the name for your category, just click the “Add New Category” button. 

The box for that category will be checked automatically for your current post. You can uncheck it if you want.

You can easily add a new category without having to edit a post. Just go to Posts » Categories and add your new category there. It’s really handy if you want to create all your categories before adding any content.

The best part is, this method also allows you to edit the slug (URL) for your categories. You can delete and rename categories, and even give them a description. 

Beyond posts, you can add categories to WordPress page content through plugins. Many page builders support this functionality natively. When adding categories in WordPress consider your long-term organization strategy. You can add an image to category WordPress headers with certain themes.

How to Add a Sub Category in WordPress

1. To add and edit a child category (also known as a subcategory) in WordPress, follow the same procedure as you did for the parent categories. While editing a post, access the settings panel and navigate to the Categories tab. 
2. Then, choose the ‘Add New Category‘ option and enter the name of your child category. 
3. Finally, select the desired parent category from the dropdown menu.
4. Likewise, you have the option to navigate to Posts » Categories for the purpose of adding child categories. 
5. Simply enter the name of your child category and choose the parent category from the provided dropdown menu.
6. If desired, your child categories can also have their own subcategories. 
7. Categories that are on the same level within a parent category are commonly referred to as “sibling” categories. 
8. It’s important to note that categories can only have one parent, meaning that you cannot assign a sub-category to multiple parent categories.

How to Display Categories and Sub Categories in WordPress Sidebar

1. To display categories and child categories in the WordPress sidebar, go to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearance » Widgets.
2. Look for the Categories widget block. If it’s not already in place, you can add it by clicking the ‘+’ button and selecting the ‘Category’ block.
3. By default, the widget will display all categories in a flat list, sorted alphabetically.
4. To show child categories beneath their parent categories, enable the ‘Show hierarchy’ option in the widget settings and click ‘Update.’
5. After making these changes, your site’s sidebar will now display parent categories with their respective child categories nested underneath.
6. Remember, categories will only appear in the list if you have assigned at least one published post to them. If the sidebar changes don’t show up, consider clearing your WordPress cache.
7. Additionally, besides using the default category widget, you can create custom category menu links using the WordPress navigation menu. You can then add this menu to your header, sidebar, footer, or other menu locations.
8. By following these steps, you can effectively showcase your categories and their subcategories in the WordPress sidebar for improved website navigation.

For online stores, WooCommerce adds a category to the menu to improve product discovery. Consider using icons with categories for better visual identification. The WP categories widget supports different sorting methods for your taxonomy display.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Words

By now, you should have an idea of how to add a category in WordPress quickly and easily. With this knowledge, you can sort your content into different classifications. This improves organization and discoverability.

It helps both large and small websites by creating a clean structure. Visitors can explore the site more easily. Categories are essential for any WordPress site. 

Be sure to understand the process from start to finish. This includes creating subcategories in WordPress when needed. You should also assign posts to the right categories. Deleting unnecessary categories is important too.

Take some time today to explore your settings page and get used to adding categories in WordPress.

Once you get the hang of it you’ll find it’s one of the most user-friendly features of the platform!