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Categories incorrectly displaying as tags

  1. nixonradio
    Member

    For some reason my blog is parsing post categories as tags. Help!

    For a couple of years, I'd been using the Hemingway theme, and every time I posted a new entry, the generated links on the post - "posted by (me) in (Category A), (Category B)" actually linked to tags rather than categories - e.g. if I posted something in a category called "Pants", the hotlink "Pants" would actually link to

    http://en.wordpress.com/tag/pants/

    instead of

    http://myblog.wordpress.com/category/pants/

    as it should do. After reading a few other forum posts about the same issue, I thought this was just a problem with Hemingway. However, today I've just switched to Chateau (which I love, by the way) and it's still happening - and only on this one blog. I have a private blog I switched over this morning as a test, and the category listings there are working just fine.

    What have I done wrong, and how can I fix it?

    Thanks!

  2. nixonradio
    Member

    (My actual blog where this weirdness is happening is at http://motownjunkies.wordpress.com - I thought it would display automatically, but it doesn't appear to have done so.)

  3. timethief
    Member

    I have flagged this thread so it gets moved to the Themes Forum where Staff will answer you.

  4. nixonradio
    Member

    I don't think this is a Themes issue - I *thought* it was when it was happening under Hemingway, but given that it's persisted - only on that blog - when I've switched two blogs to Chateau, I'm sceptical as to whether this has anything to do with Chateau.

  5. timethief
    Member

    Okay but not to worry as this is in the support forum. I suggest you contact Staff. Here’s the link http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ After you use the searchbox at the bottom of the page there will be a section that says “Have you found the answer to your question?” You can choose either “Yes I found the answer to my question.” or “No I didn’t find the answer to my question and I would like to contact support for help.” The no option will reveal the contact form.

  6. 1tess
    Moderator

    It is not theme related. That is how tags (and also categories) work under the wp global tags system:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/global-tags/

    If you have a blog set to private, (or to public but not open to search engines), then the tags and categories will link to only posts on your own blog.

    If the blog is set to public and open to search engines, then both tags and cats will link to the global tags.

  7. nixonradio
    Member

    Ah, OK...! That makes sense in terms of what's happening. Thank you 1tess!

    That raises two follow-up questions, if anyone knows the answer:

    (a) Can I stop it from happening (without blocking search engines)? I don't care about not being found in Global Tags, since my posts don't seem to be showing up there anyway. (In fact, the "category" links on each post now give the impression of being dead links, since they just lead to a blank "No posts with that tag" GT page). Is this something I can alter in Custom CSS?

    (b) If not, can I get rid of the category links altogether? (I want to keep the actual categories themselves, but I'm wondering if the "Posted by John in pants, fashion reviews" can be gotten rid of).

    Many thanks for your help!

  8. timethief
    Member

    @1tess
    **headesk**
    I didn't get what he/she meant. :(

  9. 1tess
    Moderator

    If you switch to the inove theme, then you can choose not to display tags and cats on your posts, the ones which connect to the global tags. You can have a category widget or cat/tag cloud widget in your sidebar, or as a tab of a custom menu. Or you can show categories as a theme option for your navigation menu.

  10. 1tess
    Moderator

    @timethief,
    no worries.
    That theme is brand new, but I think I love it for one of my blogs so I've played with it already…

  11. 1tess
    Moderator

    @nixonradio
    Sorry, but I don't see "Posted by John in pants, fashion reviews"
    Link??
    http://

  12. nixonradio
    Member

    That was a facetious example - "John" being the author, "pants" and "fashion reviews" being categories. The actual wording on my blog (to use the most recent post) would be "Posted by The Nixon Administration in Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, Writing credit: Smokey Robinson"

    http://motownjunkies.wordpress.com/

    Since I sometimes use colourful language, I haven't shown up in Global Tags listings for many moons now, meaning that by default my posts are showing something that's useless to me - only serving to send readers to other blogs (if there are other blogs who've tagged posts with the category names I'm using), or a "no posts here!" page (if there aren't). I wondered if there was a way to either use those links for something else (make them behave as though it was a private blog), or get rid of them altogether.

  13. 1tess
    Moderator

    Ok, I was just making sure that we were talking about the same blog.

    If you were to mark your blog as mature, then I think your blog would not be included in the global tag system. Search engines would still be able to catalog your blog.

  14. 1tess
    Moderator

    Here is the support document I'm looking at:
    http://en.support.wordpress.com/report-blogs/

    Blogs with legal adult content are not removed, so please do not report these as spam or expect us to suspend them. They are flagged as Mature so that they become less visible to general audiences throughout WordPress.com by<em< being excluded from Top Blogs, Recent Posts and Global Tag Listings.

    (emphasis: mine)

  15. 1tess
    Moderator

    sorry, emphasis like this:
    being excluded from Top Blogs, Recent Posts and Global Tag Listings.

  16. nixonradio
    Member

    Very interesting! I'm going to give it a try and see what happens. Hopefully Google won't penalise me for having "adult" content (I really don't, apart from a few cuss words, but we'll see what transpires). Thanks for all your time and help 1tess and timethief!

  17. 1tess
    Moderator

    I don't believe that search engines will penalize you for having marked your blog as mature—there were several regular posters here a while ago whose blogs were among the top blogs on their topics even though they'd marked themselves mature. (i don't use browser filters so that may affect search results)

    I also don't know how easy or difficult it is to un-mark a blog as mature. I image you'd have to contact staff directly to do that if you change your mind. (???)

    Best wishes to you on your blog…

  18. nixonradio
    Member

    (Sorry to resurrect an old thread!)

    Well, unfortunately that doesn't seem to have worked - I'm never featured on any Global Tag page, but the links in the header of each post still direct to the Global Tag page I'm apparently excluded from.

    So on every single post, I've either got a bunch of (effectively) dead links saying "Sorry, we don’t have any posts here with that tag", or - for the main tag I use (Motown), links to other blogs - as of the time of writing, including such irrelevant content as basketball news (where someone happens to have mentioned Detroit), and "Kelly Rowland Nip Slip Peekaboo!" (I'm not making this up).

    Is there anything I can do?

  19. jenia
    Happiness Engineer

    @nixonradio: the category links on your blog posts redirect you to the appropriate category pages of your own posts rather than the global tags page. Is that OK with you? Is there anything else we can help you with?

  20. xtap59
    Member

    Jenia, my category links on my posts now redirect to my category pages and not the global tags page as they did before. This has happened countless times with my blog. Could you please have a look see as to why that is.

    Thank you.
    lotgk.wordpress.com

  21. jenia
    Happiness Engineer

    We are testing some things, so the tags and categories now link to your own blog's tags and categories. You can still browse popular tags/categories on this page:
    http://en.wordpress.com/tags/

    And you can search for specific tags to see what blogs appear there, e.g. http://en.wordpress.com/tag/example

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