I have been thinking about my goals for 2011, and so far my top resolution is to figure out some proper categories for my posts.
Maybe you can help me to clean up my category clutter.
Right now, I have a long list of random categories I don’t use, and some others so generic they seem to fit EVERY post, which really isn’t the point of categories at all.
Sometimes I visit other blogs and I see such clever category titles I feel envious and inadequate. I tried to be clever and only came up with “surface tension,” but it sounds like a category for posts about anxiety, and that really isn’t what I’m going for. No, a soothing simplicity is called for here.
Friends, subscribers, fellow bloggers… send me your ideas.
UPDATE:
This post is a departure for me. After I published it, I decided to stop being such a baby and just make some new categories. So I did — even before the new year started! I’m sure I will change them later. I’m always changing something… always looking for ways to make things a little bit better. I’d still love to hear creative ideas from readers.
A Clean Surface. 
I actually am still struggling to figure out how categories work, in the WordPress sense, and how and when they’re meaningful. Have any clues? When I try to think of categories for my posts, I’m always, like, “Durr, hurr, um, minimalism?”
MM, you can find some helpful information about categories here: http://en.support.wordpress.com/?s=categories
Thanks! That was actually quite useful. =)
You’re welcome, MM.
It seems to me that your blog should have a small number of categories (5-10) that all or most of its posts fit into because your blog has a specific focus on organization, etc. Then you can attach tags to each post that are much more specific. Most “random” people who have landed on my blog did so by way of searching terms that I used in my tags.
Oh, I agree, I just haven’t been able to figure out what the categories should be. It will be my January project.
I have the same problem. I think I messed up early on in WordPress in regards to categories… now it would take far too much time to go back through and change things.
What I try to do now is categorize by paranoia, advice, and curses… then add in a random word that might relate to many different posts in the future.
D
Thanks for reading, Somethingnewplease. I mess up all the time, in so many ways! I have found, however, that the “quick edit” feature in WordPress allows for fairly easy category changes.
You probably should have no more than 30 categories. I have way too many on my blog, and it makes it hard for me and others to find things. Also, think about a periodic reading list — sort of a bibliography. “simplifying a bathroom,” for example, could contain links to the best stuff you have written on the subject.
Thanks for the suggestions, David.
I have the same problem. However I found that with my sort of blog, spirituality, you don’t need to make many categories. It does help to though.