How to Add Categories in WordPress (Step-by-Step Guide)

After creating a WordPress website, many beginners ask questions about adding or editing categories in WordPress. So in this guide, we will tell you everything about adding categories in WordPress.

Categories are very helpful in organizing a massive amount of content. By using categories, you can gather your related posts in groups and display them in any place. Apart from this, categories help the readers to find the content they’re looking for.

In this tutorial, we’ll share with you some examples and tips. So that you can easily understand all the concepts related to categories. Also, you’ll see a step-by-step process for adding categories in WordPress.

So, let’s begin.

Table of Content

What are Categories in WordPress?

Generally, you know what are categories. But in terms of WordPress, it is the most important feature that helps us in organizing the content of our websites. With the help of categories, you can arrange your site’s content in an effective way.

In simple words, we use categories to group the related topics. First, we create a category with a specific topic name. Then we assign posts to that category. This way, we arrange all the content related to a specific topic in one or more categories.

You can create unlimited amount categories in WordPress. It’s time to see how to add categories in WordPress.

How to Add Categories in WordPress

To add categories in WordPress, go to your WordPress dashboard and click on the categories link located under posts. As shown in the image below.

Click on Categories inside Posts

To create a new category in WordPress, fill in some details. First, give your category a name according to your topic, then slug (it is your category’s URL). And you can also add a description if you want (it’s optional). Then, click on the Add New Category button as shown in the image below.

Add New Category in WordPress

After that, the page will refresh and you will see a new category is added. Done!

If you click on ‘view’ to view the category page as shown in the image below.

view category

You will see your category URL is: https://www.example.com/category/places. There is a category word in your URL. You can remove this through a plugin if you don’t want this.

Note: By default, when we publish posts in WordPress those posts are automatically stored in ‘uncategorized’. As you can see in the images above, there is an ‘uncategorized’ category. You can’t delete that because it is fixed.

That’s it. I know I missed the ‘parent category’ option. Let’s see parent vs child categories.

Parent vs Child Categories in WordPress

In WordPress when you create a new category, you see an option label with ‘parent category. By using this option, you can assign a parent category to your sub-categories.

By default, there is no parent and child relation between categories. We use the words parent and child category only when we assign a parent category for some categories.

The parent and child concept is a very helpful way to organize related topics into child or subcategories.

For example, you have an online course website. So, it makes sense that you want to use a course category as a parent and make sub-categories for each course. Like, as graphics designing, web development, etc.

WordPress gives us the option to select and assign a parent category. So, in this case. First, create a category and name it ‘Courses’. Then, add some categories for courses. While creating these categories, don’t forget to select the parent category as shown below.

Adding sub categories

This option allows us to choose the parent category for any category.

After that, if you display this category in your WordPress menus, then it will look something like this as shown in the following image.

Parent vs Child example

Note: In the above image, this is just an example of parent and child. If you want to create a drop-down menu, then see this complete guide to creating menus in WordPress.

So, in this case, ‘Courses’ is your parent category. And graphic designing, web development, content writing, and marketing are child categories. If you see the categories listed on the right side. The child categories are a little bit forward with a dash.

Parent vs Child Categories in WordPress

Hope you understood the concept of parent and child categories.

How to Delete Categories in WordPress

If you want to delete a WordPress category, then you can do it with just a click. To delete categories, just hover on any category that you want to delete. Then, click delete as shown in the image below.

how to delete categories

Remember: After deleting a category in WordPress, you create a ‘404 error’. When you or your visitor will visit that category’s page, you will see a ‘404 page not found error’. You can also check it by yourself.

So, this means that the page you’re looking for is not there because the admin has deleted it. So to solve this issue you can redirect this page to any other page. For this purpose, you can use a redirection plugin. By doing this, the user wouldn’t see a 404 error again.

Now let’s see how to assign posts to WordPress categories.

How to Add Posts to Categories in WordPress

To add or assign a post to your category in WordPress, go to the ‘posts’ section. And open any post that you want to add to your category.

When the post-editing page will open, see on the right sidebar. In case, if you do not have any sidebar on the right side then click on the settings icon as shown in the image below. Then, find and click on the ‘Categories’ dropdown tab inside the ‘Post’ tab. As shown in the image below.

assign posts

After that just opt in the category that you want to use, as shown in the image below.

organize posts in categories

Done!

How to Add a Category to WordPress Menu

Adding categories to your WordPress menu is very easy. But first, make sure you know how to work with menus in WordPress. If you don’t. Then, just see this complete guide on how to create menus in WordPress. Then, see the below quick step to add a category to your menu.

To add a category in WordPress Menu, first, go to ‘Menus‘. Then, under the categories tab, select the categories that you want to add to your WordPress Menu. After selecting, click on the Add to Menu button. Then, click on the Save Menu button as shown in the image below.

adding categories to menus

Note: You can display categories on different menu locations. Whether it is a navbar menu, sidebar menu, or footer menu.

Hope you understood.

Tip: Want to secure your WordPress website from hackers? See these best WordPress security plugins.

That’s it. If you have questions related to this guide then feel free to ask in the comment section below.

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