Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 7

Part 7 - Alternative Multiple List Option

This option does not require you to do any coding, but it will only work well if you have a short number of top categories. On my blog Shark's Short Story Reviews, that is the case. To be specific, I have three top categories: Authors, Topics, Anthologies.

All posts are labeled at least with an author name, and one or more topic labels. If the story came from an anthology which I also want to feature, then I add that label.

I have used the Blogger/Blogspot gadget for creating a list multiple times, once for each top category. The example shown is for Authors. Then choose Selected Labels, and click "edit." This will present you with a list of all your labels, and you can choose the ones which fit the list.



This gives me three separate lists of labels, with the appropriate ones in each top category.



This also takes some maintenance, because every time I add a new author, topic or anthology, I have to remember to go in and edit the list to include that new label.

So, the advantage is that I don't have to do any coding. The disadvantage is that there are multiple lists. However, I decided that on my Short Story Review blog, this really made quite a nice division.

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 6

Part 6 - Maintaining a Category Tree

Whenever you write posts with labels that already exist, you don't have to do anything.

If you add new labels
However, if you decide to add a new label, you'll need to add that category to your code. This should be really easy to do unless you add another whole top category and perhaps need to edit the labels on some of the other posts a bit. Once the tree is built, keeping this up isn't burdensome, unless you let the changes pile up and forget them.

Splitting categories
If you begin to get a large number of posts in any one subcategory, you should probably consider splitting it into more specific groups. We all know that if your link isn't on the first returns from a search engine the chances of it being seen are nearly nil. It will work the same on your blog. Aim for the returns fitting on one page. You have the ability to set the number of blog posts that are displayed on the landing page, and the number of posts in a subcategory shouldn't be much more than this number.



Dealing with Pages
Just a couple of notes on how to deal with Pages in Blogger/Blogspot. If you want to edit the page you do so from Posting/Edit Pages/Edit. This will get you to the code.

However, if you want to change the order of the page tabs, this is done from a different location. See graphic below. Go to Design view, and you'll see the gadget marked Pages. It should be located under your header. If you click on Edit a box will open which allows you to choose which pages to display, and to change the order in which you would like to have them presented.



This completes the basic tutorial of how to build a category tree for Blogger/ Blogspot. There is one other alternative which will be the next post.

The next topic is Part 7- Alternative Multiple Listl Option .

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 5

Part 5 - Where Should I Put a Category Tree?

There are two good choices of location for a category tree.

You can put a category tree in one of the sidebars, or you could make it a separate page on those templates which offer good visibility for page tabs. Either of these is easily accessible. Of course, the sidebar option is in full sight, without expecting readers to click to see it, but it will create a large number of links coming off your landing page. Google PageRank may be affected negatively by more than 100 links from a page.

If you haven't done so yet, get rid of any label list or tag cloud widgets. These are now superfluous, and they will be too stuffed to be of much use. I've also removed the archive widget, because finding posts by their chronology is nearly impossible for a long-lived blog too.



To add the category tree to a sidebar
• go to the design page and click "Add a Gadget" in the desired column
• choose HTML/Javascript and click on the + sign
• this will open the box where you can enter your code
• paste in your category tree code
• add a title such as "Category Tree" if desired
• choose save
• you can preview if desired, move the gadget to the desired position in the sidebar, etc. just like any other gadget



To add the category tree to a separate page
• under the "Posting" tab, choose Edit Pages
• click add a new page (up to 10 allowed), and title it as you will- eg. "Categories"
• be sure to chose the "Edit HTML" tab for the editing box (not "Compose")
• paste in your category tree code
• preview if you want, then publish the page

Your category tree has now been created. You can tweak it with spaces, heirarchy, etc. until it looks the way you want. If you have carefully grouped and labeled all your posts, it will offer readers access to all your current content.

There is some maintenance you will need to perform if you add new labels, and that will be the topic of Part 6- Maintaining a Category Tree

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 4

Part 4 - How to Code the Tree


I suggest beginning to build your tree in a text editor such as Notepad. Once you understand what you are doing, then you can cut and paste the code into an HTML widget.

Use your outline to guide the build. In fact, you can paste that outline right into Notepad, and then add the links around the words/phrases you have chosen.

Call Labels or Search Results
There are two basic choices of ways to pull content from your blog, and those go back to The Difference Between Search and Labels in Blogger.
• You can call all posts which have been given a certain label.
• Or you can call all posts which contain a certain word or phrase.

Using the choice to call a label is preferred, but there might be times when you would want to call a search.

Write the Code
Here is how to call all the posts with a certain label, for example "spam."
<a href="http://yourblogurl.blogspot.com/search/label/spam">spam</a>

Just use that format and substitute whatever label you are listing for the word "spam," and your own blog's url for "yourblogurl.blogspot.com" You can make it so that each result will open in a new tab/window by inserting the 'target="_BLANK"' code:
<a target="_BLANK" href="http://yourblogurl.blogspot.com/search/label/spam">spam</a>

To call a search use this code:
< href="http://yourblogurl.blogspot.com/search?q=spam">spam </a>
with the adaptations noted above.

To move the text to the next line (like hitting return) add <BR>

To make a heading bold, surround the text with <B>Make this text Bold</B>

Create Hierarchy
There are three ways to create hierarchy for your tree. You can use an unordered list (with bullets), and ordered list (with numbers), or manually add bullets with the desired number of space you want to indent each level.
• For bullets with the default indent (may be wider than you want), surround your entire list with <UL>Your list</UL>, then begin each item with <LI>
• For numbered items use the same structure, but substitute OL for the UL
• To manually place bullets use &bull; , you can use the space bar to put one space before and after the bullet, if you want more spaces use &nbsp;  for each desired space.

Example
If you look at the graphic in this post, it's the code for the first section of the category tree in the right column. I've highlighted the code for the title line "Blog Analysis" in red. You can see that I chose to also make the title a link for a label that includes all the posts from the whole category, and that I've chosen to make it bold.

You can see that the subheadings are bulleted by manually adding my own bullets.

Once you have gotten a good start on coding your tree, you can place in in your blog. More on that in Part 5- Where Should I Put a Category Tree?.

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 3

Part 3 - How to Work with Labels

Over the life of your blog, you may have chosen and used labels carefully, or you may have been more willy-nilly. Either way, there are bound to be changes needed when you want to organize better. It's quite simple to add, remove, or change labels in Blogger/ Blogspot.

First of all, you need to choose the Posting Tab, and Edit Posts. That will present a list of your existing labels on the left and your posts in the middle (maybe multiple pages of them, if your blog has been around for a long time).

To add an existing label to a post

First, you need to mark all the posts to which you want to apply the existing label.

If these are likely to be a subset of some other label, you can click on the label in the Labels column, and only the posts with that label will be listed on the right. You can also use the search box, which is above the list of posts to help you narrow the choices.

If none of these help, you can just do a "brute force" visual scan of the titles. If you miss labeling some post on the first pass, it's no big deal to catch it another time, or to fix one that you might find later. But the better the job you do with your labeling, the better your category tree will be.

To add an existing label:
1. check the little box beside the post(s)
2. pull down the list of Label Actions and find the label you want
3. click on it, and your checked post will have that label applied

To add a new label to a post


This process is very similar:

To add a new label:
1. check the little box beside the post(s)
2. pull down the list of Label Actions and find New Label
3. click on it, and a little box will appear
4. enter the new label and click OK



To remove a label from a post
1. check the little box beside the post(s)
2. pull down the list of Label Actions and find Remove Label at the very bottom
3. click the label you wish to remove
4. note that if a label is removed from all posts, it will automatically be removed from the list. There can be no labels with zero posts.

If, immediately after doing one of these actions, you realize that you made a mistake, there is an Undo link at the top of the Posts column which will allow you to reverse the last action.

With these tools, you should be able to add good labels to your posts in Blogger/ Blogspot, and remove poor ones.

The next topic is Part 4- How to Code the Tree

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 2

Part 2 - Change the Way You Think About Labels

A good strategy for the use of Labels to go in a tag cloud or the Blogger Labels widget is usually to use as few as possible with high levels. This reduces the number of total labels, so that people aren't overwhelmed with choices in a list.


However, as you'll note from the graphic, you can only order them alphabetically or by the number of posts under each one (frequency). You can choose not to list all labels, which has possibilities, but since you can't nest these widgets it means that if you want a category tree, you'll have to do it by hand. We're getting there!

I'm proposing that to make an effective tree you need to change strategies, and apply more labels to posts. In fact, each post should have a minimum of two labels. Here is how you should choose them.

First, you need to analyze your blog. A good way to do this is click on the Edit Posts choice under the Posting tab. This will give you a list of all labels on the left, and all posts on the right (if you've been blogging a long time, the list of all posts may have several pages).



Look at your label list. Make an outline- yes an old fashioned outline- with your main categories and subheadings. Keep in mind that your labels as they exist may not be the correct choices. If you have a sports blog, you may need to have top categories of Basketball, Hockey, Baseball, etc. On the other hand perhaps your slant is better suited to top categories like Pro Sports, College Sports, Intermurals, Kids Sports. You can see the ones I chose for this blog in the Category Tree in the right sidebar (still under construction right now). A mommy blog might use things like Food, Activities, Discipline, etc. The primary thing to remember is that these should be the most broad categories possible that make sense.

Next, choose subcategories- and you may need lots. These will totally depend on the things you have blogged about. And you can always add more as your blog grows (although you will have to manually add new ones to the tree with this method). Suggestions might be- under Basketball: Technique, Players, Strategy, etc.

Once you have created this outline you are ready for the next step, which is "How to Work with Labels" in Blogger/ Blogspot

The next topic is Part 3- How to Work with Labels.

Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Part 1

Part 1 - What is the Goal?

The overall goal of building a category tree is to create a framework that organizes the content of your blog and presents it to readers in such a way that they can easily see what your blog offers, and find topics of interest.

This is different from a plain list of labels which are not collected by topic.
Think back to your school days. This goal is simply known as an outline. On the left is a portion of the category tree of this blog, which I am building in the right column.

When it is complete, it will have a number of top level categories, with sub-categories under those. You can have as many levels as you desire. The more posts your blog has, the more you may want to break this down so that if someone clicks a sub-point they will be shown fewer than 10 posts. A goal might be that all the posts under a lowest level sub-category would display on one page (I can't state a specific number, since you can choose how many posts show on one page).

If you create a good category tree, you can remove the archive widget, and the label widget, because this will be a much better way for your posts to be organized. The easier it is for readers to find useful posts, the more likely they are to read more, which will lower the bounce rate, resulting in better rankings for your blog.

Go to Part 2- Change the Way You Think about Labels.

Blogger Category Tree Tutorial Index

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger - Index

I am creating a tutorial series on how to build a category tree on Blogger/ Blogspot blogs. Since it has several parts, I'm presenting an index to the sections. Not all links will be live until the series is complete.

Before you begin, read: The Difference Between Search and Labels in Blogger

Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 1 -What is the Goal?
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 2 -Change the Way You Think About Labels
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 3 -How to Work with Labels
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 4 -How to Code the Tree
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 5 -Where Should I Put a Category Tree?
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 6 -Maintaining a Category Tree
Creating a Category Tree for Blogger- Part 7 -Alternative Multiple List Option

The Difference Between Search and Labels in Blogger

Have you wondered when you should use the search box, and when you should click on a label or an entry in a tag cloud? Which one will give you better results when you are trying to find something on a Blogger/ Blogspot blog?

When you understand the difference between the two it can help guide you. These two choices are also the basis for how to build a Category Tree in Blogger/ Blogspot, which I am going to explain in my next post.

The search box, in the upper left-hand corner searches only the text of the blog. It is not case sensitive, and it will return posts which include all the words you enter, in any order. You can also filter, as in camera - canon will return all posts that include the word camera, but not the word Canon. It will NOT find posts which are labeled camera, but which do not contain the word camera in the text.

The other sorting choice available to readers is to click on a label. All the posts which carry that label will be presented. There are four ways bloggers may show labels:

1. Some bloggers don't use labels at all (all bloggers should as it helps search engines find their content).
2. Some bloggers offer a list, or partial list of their labels in one of the sidebars.
3. Some bloggers offer a tag cloud, where the labels are displayed with their relative size indicating the number of posts so labeled.
4. Some few bloggers actually use labels to build a category tree

Labels tell you a lot about a blogger, because if there is any kind of list you will know at a glance what topics are important to the person. You will know what the blog is really about, no matter what their header may say.

Labels are only as valuable as the care with which the blogger applied them. If a blogger wrote a post about Pull-Ups Diapers, and labeled it with Diapers, but not with Potty Training (when such a label had already been created), then someone who clicked the Potty Training Label would not be shown the post about the Pull-Ups.

Used correctly, labels can be powerful.

Category Tree Tutorial Index