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I noticed in the past couple of days that my categories are all linking as tags. So the categories on my posts actually take a reader to the Wordpress 'tag' pages rather than to my own blog's pages. Categories worked perfectly well in the past & I haven't made any significant changes to my blog in the meanwhile (except to add the Category Cloud to my sidebar). Is anyone else having this issue? Is there a fix?
My blog: http://neargh.wordpress.com
Your tags work exactly as they are supposed to. Mind you, wordpress.com tags and categories work in 2 ways, locally and globally. Local tags and categories are found in the widgets in your sidebar and point to posts on your blog only. Global tags and categories are found under or above your post title or content (depending on your theme) and refer to categories and tags found on all blogs on wordpress.com. The idea is so you can find similar content on other blogs on wordpress.com. This function cannot be turned off, that is how wordpress.com works
Um, actually up until recently, my categories still posted to my local categories. So I'm still confused. Was this a recent change? And if so, why? I don't see the point of changing something that makes perfect sense (and is standard across all blogging software) to something that is redundant (why would I use tags AND categories if they're just going to take readers to the same pages?). Thank you for your reply, though.
I am not sure when the change was made. Has your blog always been open to the public, so to speak. If you set your blog to not be seen by search engines, then you only have local categories and tags, whichever you click on.
Tag and category pages are two different things. Of course, in your case, say, if all posts in the "yoga" category also have a "yoga" tag, the essentially those pages will be the same. However, if you have posts in a different category, but also with the yoga tag, then the pages will be different. Again, using your site as an example, you could have a category "yoga" and tag them with the yoga techniques used. Now, that makes sense. Using same categories and tags is as you say redundant.
It takes some skill to come up with a useful scheme for structuring categories and tags, and I'm still struggling myself.
Um, actually up until recently, my categories still posted to my local categories.
That is how I have always understood it as well. Tags are global, categories are local. We've received a lot of user feedback about this change and we're considering it.
Here at WordPress.com, changes are rarely final, said, and done - they are constantly being tweaked with user feedback in mind. With that in mind, we welcome your feedback and will use it to make changes to WordPress.com.
Tags are global, categories are local? That's rather a shock, since I don't use tags at all on any of my blogs and all of those links go to the global pages.
The category widget and tag cloud is local. The tags and categories that appear next to your post (post metadata) are global. At least that's how they work on all my blogs.
And that's the way they have always worked AFAIK
Yes, agreed. Did I just mis-read that or something? I assumed it was the Chaotic Soul issue resurfacing.
Same problem with my categories. Since 3 days ago my categories allowed readers to surf through my posts, which makes sense: if I create a "Cat Pictures" category I mean it as a section of my blog. It's like chapters in a book, or different rooms in the same flat. It's three days I see my categories behaving as if they were tags. I banally call it a bug :)
@dharmavagrant
The blog in your user profile is not a wordpress.com blog. Which blog are you referring to?
My photolog, here:
http://twfwiw.wordpress.com/
You've got to realize, that when it comes to wordpress and the wordpress "tags" pages, tags and categories are the same. Typically if you click on a tag or a category name in a post, they both take you to the global tags pages. When it comes to the global tags pages, tags and categories are the same thing.
can we please change categories back to surfing through one's own posts? thanks.
If you click on categories in your sidebar they will bring up just your posts.
Categories and tags (in the post area) have lead to the wordpress global tags pages for as long as I have been here (nearly 2 years). There used to be a theme or two where that did not happen, but basically that was a wordpress oversight.
"You've got to realize, that when it comes to wordpress and the wordpress "tags" pages, tags and categories are the same."
They weren't until three days ago. And they still aren't in the Archive page; it's a total nonsense, and according to my humble opinion that's a bug.
Since I've been here (2 years) when I clicked on a category link under or above a post (in all the themes I've been using), I was taken to the WP global tags pages. When tags were introduced, clicking on a tag link under or above a post also took me to the WP global tags pages.
On my test blog, I just went to the archives page and clicked on a category name under several posts, and it took me to the WP global tags pages.
I clicked on a category in my sidebar and then clicked on a category under a post, and again was taken to the WP global tags pages.
Any category or tag link I click on under or above a post on any of the three themes I'm using with my test blogs leads me to the WP global tags pages.
Wordpress updated themes just recently to make certain they were all consistent when it came to tags and categories. Perhaps the particular theme you were using was one of those that was updated.
I see you are using the photo theme which I have no experience with so I don't know how it has worked in the past, but in general, what I've said above is accurate, and I've messed with virtually every theme here at WP.com.
tsp is quite right, even for your theme. If the links on each of your posts led only within your blog then your blog had a bug. I am using that theme and can confirm what he says.
Staff have been going through WP.com making sure all themes and blogs work according to those principles. If yours didn't work that way up to three days ago, you're lucky.
You two are living in a parallel world – sorry to be rude. Surf the web and find any other blog platform having global categories (!) instead of local ones. It's like saying I decide to write posts on my blog which are all about my dog, whose name is 'Karl Marx', and I file those posts under a 'Marxism' category. By that name, if you go global, you'll end up reading a lot of cool stuff, but not about my dog. "Global categories" have never existed so far; it's a bug. If someone wants to call it feature, good for you, but remember a bug will generate another bug soon, and your "new feature" in one year time will end up being a dozen bugs, with users exporting their stuff elsewhere :)
It's always been that way here at wordpress.com.
It doesn't matter what other non-wordpress.com platforms are doing.
It isn't a bug.
It's the way WordPress designed it.
By the way, "Categories can be selectively converted to tags using the category to tag converter", it says in the dashboard. I never converted them to tags: I wanted categories. So, I suppose the new bug – ooops, feature! – must be debugged a bit :P
Interesting discussion. I can believe that, at least in some themes, at least some time in the past, clicking on a category name led to the matching global tags page, but: what for? I would definitely regard it as a bug.
I see at least two problems with this. First, it is somewhat confusing, since clicking on a tag name or on a category name will lead to the same result, and the reason for this clearly fails to be clear to any user.
Second, the way in which a blogger will choose a tag name or a category name is quite different. A tag is widely accepted as something understandable out of the context of a single, specific blog. It is somewhat uncomfortable not to be able to choose whether clicking on the tag must lead to a local or a global listing, but I guess most of us can live with the global one. Way too many words have already been spent on "folksonomy", so I'm not going to elaborate here; I wouldn't be able to say anything new.
On the contrary, a category name is chosen on other grounds. It may be something ironic, or maybe a pun on a recurring topic of the blog, so that only readers of that blog will understand the actual meaning of that name. Or it may be chosen to partition the blog in clearly separated parts; this is not always the case, but quite often. Therefore, the meaning of its name will be only clear along with the names of the other categories of that blog, and certainly not in a global context.
Logical consequence: listing together pages from different blogs that share a category heading is very likely to bring up curious and funny results, but will not satisfy a need of the user.
The platform itself is built on this principle; in fact, it seems to me that there is no way to run a global category search matching on the category name. (Hence, the platform linking to the global tag page. No global category page. Doesn't anybody wonder why?)
Please, give the platform users a way to revert to a saner approach to category links. Thanks!
@ dharmavagrant: how long have you been on Wordpress.com? Global Categories work that way and have since before I got here a couple of years ago.
We give answers that relate to this platform, because it's a technical help forum for bloggers using this platform. When people say "it isn't supposed to work like that" we reply that it IS, because that is the way staff have designed it to work at Wordpress.com.
I have blogs on five different platforms, but what good does it do to talk about Drupal etc when people are looking for help with their WP.com blogs?
It isn't necessary to be rude; it's only necessary to be well-informed.
I am well-informed. I said it twice in previous posts, check. The local/global setting only changed three days ago; before, all my categories have always been local (also my tags, by the way). In last year I tested almost 12 different templates, widgets and all, to see which one I could choose for a photolog. So I'm not new; been using Wordpress.com for some 14 months, I suppose they're enough to realize if categories are or aren't local.
Anyway. I wonder– Why are you fooling me? If I tell you that 3 (well, 4 almost! :) days ago it was *not* working that way, if other people tell you exactly the same – what's the point? Don't you believe us? Do you want me to state you are right? YOU ARE RIGHT. But that's not helpful, nor going anywhere.
Did you by chance have your blog set to private, or possible set to disallow search engines but allow normal visitors?
My suggestion is for you to contact support about it.
What we are saying is that the change was done deliberately, by staff, as a matter of policy. As I said above in the thread, if it didn't work for you this way previously, you're lucky. A lot of people don't want it to work that way. But tsp is correct: you need to contact staff and talk to them if you want it changed.
If you have an opinion, you're more than welcome to contact us and let us know about it. We do take user suggestions very seriously and want to know what you think.
Thanks, ServiceUntitled. I appreciate your reply. My opinion is really simple, so that it can be (re)expressed here: categories should be local. In *my* opinion, ça va sans dire. Earlier in this thread, 7or3 said quite a few interesting things about it.
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