using 'categories' with blogger

last week one of the students, who had previously used wordpress, asked me if blogger 'did categories' because [s]he wanted to file their posts under categories reflecting which college project they referred to.

'no...'  i replied with the robust confidence of someone talking out of his nether regions '... blogger disnae support categories.  the best you can do is organise posts by date'. 

well, even a towering intellect like myself can occasionally get things wrong and, after further tinkering i have discovered that, whilst blogger disnae support categories per se, there is a way to make it behave as if it does, taking advantage of the fact that blogger does support attaching keywords to a post [or labels in blogger parlance] and does allow you to add some custom menus to your template layout [providing you're using one of the modern templates].

so here's how to use categories in blogger:

1. login to blogger and from the dashboard page click on layout to take you to the template section.  then click on page elements. 

2. now click on the add a page element  link in the box at the top of your list of sidebar items [ profile and archives will already be there as defaults]

3. in the window which pops up find the labels item and click add to blog.

4. after you've added it you can click edit to customise the title.  you may prefer to call it categories instead of labels.  i've changed mine to tags.

5. you can also rearrange the order of the sidebar items.  by dragging them.  i've put my profile on top [and renamed it about me], labels  [renamed tags ] underneath and archives [renamed previous drivel] at the bottom.

6. now whenever you write a post and want to file it under a certain category.  use that category name as a label.  the labels box is at the bottom of the posting box.  to file a post under multiple categories separate them with a comma.  if you've used a category name before, blogger will suggest it as you begin to type [below i've typed 'blogg' and blogger is guessing i'm referring to my previously used blogger category.  to accept blogger's guess, just hit the tab key - it'll fill in the rest of the word for you and even add a comma, ready for the next one.

7. once you've done all that, you'll have a nice wordpress-esque categories menu on your blog, allowing  you to archive your posts by category as well as date.

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