- Blogging_: generate categories for your blog
Updated Nov 24: see my latest post with step-by-step instructions on creating categories.
Following my previous post on how to create categories in Blogger easily (see also FreshBlog's posts on other methods here and here) , I wrote some JavaScript code to generate code for anyone who's interested to add categories to his/her sidebar template. Here's how to use it:
Categories: [Blogging_] Tags: [netcf2] [Categories]
Following my previous post on how to create categories in Blogger easily (see also FreshBlog's posts on other methods here and here) , I wrote some JavaScript code to generate code for anyone who's interested to add categories to his/her sidebar template. Here's how to use it:
- First, decide what are the category names you want. These names must be searchable by the Blogger search engine. My way to ensure this is to "tag" every of my posts by prefixing the category name in its title. For example, this particular post has "Blogging" as the title prefix.
- Next, visit this page at my other site (Blogger doesn't allow me to embed the JavaScript in a post, so I have to upload my script generator elsewhere).
- In the first textbox, enter the URL of your blog. For my case (as an example), it will be netcf2.blogspot.com
- There's a link beside the word Categories. Click on it to add more textboxes (as many as the number of categories you intend to have). Then type in the category names in the textboxes.
- Finally, click Generate code. And copy the generated code to your Blogger template code (place it in the sidebar). This is similar to adding Google Adsense code.
Categories: [Blogging_] Tags: [netcf2] [Categories]
56 Comments:
Well, I just want to say a huge thank you to you and your brilliant hack. It works, it was easy and I am more than happy.
Thank you very much. I've looked at your blog - the categories fit nicely. And you have many of them!
thank you, thank you, thank you! even a technodummy like me can get it right on the first try. As soon as I can, I will plug this hack to my fellow Bloggers.
Yay!
I added the categories and it seems to work, yet it only seems to search the first 50 posts. How can we change that so it searches the ENTIRE blog, archives and all (Blogger)?
-d
hi Darren, yes it seems that Blogger returns only the top 100 results that match the category. thanks for pointing out. i think this is a shortcoming of this hack, but it shouldn't affect too many people IMO.
We really need to be able to search the entire blog. if you look at http://davidvaldez.blogspot.com you'll see that he has an extensive archive on many topics.
hi Darren, thanks for your comments. Unfortunately, my little hack depends on Blogger Search, and I'm not able to make it return more than 100 results for a particular blog. Sorry.
Thanks for coming up with this work-around to create categories...it's very clever!! But I'm having problems getting the blogger database to include all of my posts in its searches (and there are only 55 on the site right now)...which obviously affects the performance of the keywords. Any suggestions? I've reposted the entire site several times tonight but that's not helping. Thanks. Chris, hlswatch.blogspot.com
ps. One suggestion for others: if you change the "%20"'s (ascii space) in the search field in the code to dashes, it makes it possible for the keyword phrase to be searched...and not all of the words. This improves performance dramatically if you have multi-word categories.
hi chris, i visited your blog. i think it's working now, is it not?
hi chris, you are right on the dashes. i've also updated my script generator to include quote-marks (""), which basically achieve the same thing. thanks for the tip!
Thanks for the great hack. It's exactly what i've been looking for. But I can't get it to work. I did everything you spelled out & still nothing. My site is not hosted on blogger but on my site, therefore blogger would be searching psolis.com/dreamscapes not on a blogger spot. Could this be the problem?
hi pablo, thanks for using my hack. I tried doing a general search for "vivid dreamscapes" in Blogger Search, but your blog does not turn up. Other keywords yield nothing too. I suspect that Blogger Search is not indexing your blog which is hosted outside of blogspot. Maybe you could check with the Blogger staff?
Thanks for the reply. Happy New Year!
I tried support @ blogger search, but as you know an email may not be forthcoming in direct reply.
Could you speculate as to why I am not being indexed? I do have the 'ping Weblogs.com' turned on.
I also did some searches on getting indexed on blogger, but still looking.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, it works !
As I just re-started my blog from scratch, I was really considering dropping blogger for some platform where Tags and Categories would be available. True, I'm hosted outside blogspot and it does take some time for the indexing to work but it really is fair enough considering my usage.
Thanks for you clever trick and happy 2006
hi John, thanks for using my little hack!
hi Pablo, I'm trying to help you with the Blogger Search issue. I note that your blog isn't hosted at blogspot. Could you check your Settings if your Blog URL is set correctly? It seems from the HTML of your site that your Site Feed URL is invalid - http://www.psolis.com/dreamscapes/index.html/atom.xml and this could cause problems when the search bot tries to index your pages.
Perhaps if you configure your Blog URL to http://www.psolis.com/dreamscapes/ (without the index.html in the URL) will help?
Let me know. Thanks.
Daniel;
thank you for taking the time to look into this for me. I did the changes you suggested.
Again thanks for the great hack & for you taking the time to look into it.
hi Pablo, I think it works now! I checked "stories_" and "poetry_". Both categories worked.
Blogger refuses to search my blog! Do you know how to fix this?
Hi Jill, from the HTML of your blog, I think you're not subscribed to the site feed.
To include your blog in Blogger Search, you have to enable the "site feed" feature (which is enabled by default).
To do it, go to Settings-> Site Feed, and select Yes for "Publish Site Feed".
Hope this helps.
Hi Dan, Thanks for this! I have changed the setting and I'm hopeful it will work. I guess it will take a while for my pages to be indexed. You have helped out a lot of people! :) Thanks heaps!
hi Jill, it's my pleasure to help. :)
Just an update... it's working! Yippee!
I wrote up a simplified line-by-line explanation of http://pappmaskin.blogspot.com/2005/10/blogger-categories.html at http://www.ylcf.org/2005/12/blogger-categories.html
Thanks man, works like a charm! One or two irreleant hits, but hey - I'm happy!
Just wondering is it possible to have multiple keywords in one category? (like 'fun OR funny' both under category Funny)
hi Rarity, you can try putting the "pipe" character | between the 2 words. It tells the search engine you want to search either word. Try it and let us know!
Great! That did the trick! You're my hero, Danchong!
Thank you! I have used your script to create categories for my Blogger blog Bibleweb.com. You have made my life MUCH easier!
-- Bill Blue
Why the search doesn't show the newest posts?
What can I do to make it show the latests?
hi Geligent, do you mind giving me the URL of your blog. I suspect it could be due to your blog config.
you can check out what i have done at my blog.
Hi:
I'm having problem with blogger search. Checked both settings, they all look correct. Can you please check my site???
Thanks!
nicotinewithdrawal.blogspot.com
Combine the power of Google to make categories for Blogger blogs as well as tags for del.icio.us, technorati or whatever else you can imagine. Perhaps some smart programmer out there will create a javascript for it.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
Hi, thanks for the tip, it worked for me.
I also think I figured out what's going on with the posts that refuse to be included in the search:
The trick (that worked on my blog) is this: blogger search releases its spiders once a day or something. So for the posts of the past, one has to wait till next spider-visit.
But then, the spiders only visit the main page or something like that! So, if one makes all posts available on the main page, they will all have been "searched" within 24h. Then you can limit your main page again (all it takes is one visit for them to be included, at least for my blog, where I didn't have too many posts!).
But I have another problem myself:
I would like to find a way to display the number of entries of each category on the sidebar. Sth like this:
Science (11)
Art (3)
Sports (6)
etc, but I cant' find a way to make it happen automatically.
hi Thrass, I have an idea of implementing the count for each category, but it'll require scripts to run on a fast server. If anyone can donate server cpu time and some space for php scripts, I'd be happy to do it and let everyone use it freely.
(Alternatively, if I receive enough donation to get hosting for a sustainable period of time, I'd also do it.)
Thanks for this, I've been considering leaving Blogger because they don't have categories! However, I can't seem to get it to search correctly. I've put tags in both the title and the body, but the search doesn't find any of my posts. Help?
http://morganpdx.blogspot.com/
hi Morgan, I visited your blog. Seems like you got it working!
Oh please please will you help me? I followed your instructions and I put a tag in one of my post but blogger still doesn't find it when I search? What's wrong?
hi Frida, your "Om mig_" category is working. For the older posts, you'll have to wait a while for the search engine to "re-index" those posts.
Hi Thank you so much. Blogger really needs Catogeries like Wordpress. I have used ur valuable inputs. but still I am not able to get the posts of catogeries.
I have done all settings as well its been 5 days, by that time site should have been indexed too.
Please check - http://planetofprince.blogspot.com
Kindly guide me about this.
You can also mail me at
planetofprince AT yahoo.com
hi Prem, you need to include the keywords (or key phrases) in your posts. For example, if your post is to be categorized under "Technology NewZ_", then you should mention the phrase "Technology NewZ_" somewhere in that post. The search bot is definitely indexing your posts - I did a search for "PATOLAS" and it worked.
Hope this helps.
-daniel
Hi,Thanks so much for all your help! I'm new to blogging and Im trying to learn fast because I love it.
The thing is that I made some categories for my blog but I don't know how do I put a tag in a post for the categories to work. Any help will be very appreciated.
hi Gaby, cute baby you have! To tag a story/post, you can simply add a line to the end of your post, for example:
Filed under: Buenos Aires, My life as a mom
The above example will categorize the post under 2 categories. Of course, you can tag it under more categories, or just 1.
Another way of tagging your story/post is to make sure that the phrase "Buenos Aires" (as an example) appear somewhere in your post. Yes, somewhere, anywhere.
Hope this helps. Enjoy motherhood!
Good Morning,
I spent last weekend creating my categories and all seemed well. Starting Yesterday there was only 1 post listed under each category and a couple had none.
I tried reentering my categories and republished numerous times with no luck.
I looked at a couple of other sites lister here and I see many of them with only one post listed.
Are you aware of any problems? I went to the blogger board and saw no other posts on this problem, am I alone?
qualityg
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
I'm having the same experience as "qualityg" on 7/20. It's been a few weeks since I inserted the categories side bar, and I've placed the relevant category words in the "permalink" at the bottom of each post. As qg says, I'm getting just one post listed under each category... and it's usually the same one.
I've also started putting category words in the title, as you suggested, but it's not showing up.
My blog is "The Word Sanctuary" at smootpage.blogspot.com
Thanks for any help you can give.
Thank you so much for this hack! The posts were starting to feel unruly to me so categorizing them is going to be great. Thanks again!
Very helpful. I will be adding you to the resource section of bloggertalk.com. Please feel free to join.
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hi i used your javascript code on my site http://mexican-taint.blogspot.com after i embedded the code i got to work on labeling my posts to correspond my categories for searching. this did not work well. the only things that are coming up are actual words in the post and not the label. i want to have different categories such as : Movies, Music, Mixtapes, Programs, E-Books, Misc. and have the corresponding results show up from the category list. plz help me with this u can get at me via my site or themexicantaint@gmail.com thank you
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THANKYOU MATE, brilliant hack, tried it , and please take time out to check my blog
http://envisage-s.blogspot.com/
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