Creating Categories in Blogger

Blogger does not offer any native way to categorize blog posts. After a little research I found a couple of work-arounds. One was to use deli.cio.us to save each post as a favorite and categorize them there. Another, simplier way is to use the google blogsearch feature.

The first step is to decide where to place the category. One option is to place it in the post title (Music: Playing MP3s or Playing MP3s (Music)). The problem with this is the category names need to short so they do not clutter up the post titles. Doing this creates more generic categories that will return some unrelated items.

I created a template for new posts that gives me the ability to categorize the post before I start writing. I used the following code in the template:

<p class="category">Category: </p>

I place the category after the colon in the above. In the template I assigned the category class of the p tag to be smaller than the rest of the text make it look like it is a built-in feature.

In the sidebar there is a link for each category that searches my blog for that name.

Categories: blogging, internet