You can use categories to define sections of your site and group related posts. The default category is “Uncategorized” until you change it in your writing settings.
What’s the difference between categories and tags? Normally, tags are ad-hoc keywords that identify important information in your post (names, subjects, etc) that may or may not recur in other posts, while categories are pre-determined sections. If you think of your site like a book, the categories are like the Table of Contents and the tags are like the terms in the index.
When adding a new category on this screen, you’ll fill in the following fields:
- Name — The name is how it appears on your site.
- Slug — The “slug” is the URL-friendly version of the name. It is usually all lowercase and contains only letters, numbers, and hyphens.
- Parent — Categories, unlike tags, can have a hierarchy. You might have a Jazz category, and under that have child categories for Bebop and Big Band. Totally optional. To create a subcategory, just choose another category from the Parent dropdown.
- Description — The description is not prominent by default; however, some themes may display it.
You can change the display of this screen using the Screen Options tab to set how many items are displayed per screen and to display/hide columns in the table.
