Categories are a way of classifying your posts based on topic, or category. They’re great because if you have a site about animals and you post about giraffes, kangaroos and sharks, having a category for each would allow your readers to display entries only pertinent to each by clicking in the corresponding category.

Categories allow for a broad grouping of post topics, but when you want to describe a post in more specific terms, more categories are required. Before you know it, you might have more categories than you know what to do with. And too many categories makes finding what you’re looking for hard, thus totally defeating the purpose of categories.

So to help further classify a category’s subcategories, WordPress created tags.

Tags

Tags are similar to categories, but they are generally used to describe your post in more detail. They’re often very specific to the content in the post- leave the broad organization to categories but get specific when you’re using tags.

For most blogs, categories are visibly listed in the sidebar, allowing visitors find your posts on a particular topic. If you plan them based on your ideal target, here are some guidelines on how to use them effectively:

• Define the topics you market wants
• Focus your writing on relevant content
• Ensure your content is organized to enable easier searching and a better experience for your viewers
•  Keep the number of categories small and manageable
•  Use your keyword terms if possible to organize your posts for your readers who are searching for these topics
•   File posts into the categories that make sense. If you find that your posts fit into too many, maybe you need to break your post into more focused posts or rethink your categories.

Clearly defined categories and properly tagged posts will not only improve your site’s SEO but will improve topic searchability within your site. And if someone’s looking for something in your site and they find it, it saves them from leaving and looking elsewhere.

Ready to categorize your site? Don’t forget to tag it, too!

Remember, a theme might take a little tweaking to perfect the look, but think of how much money you’re saving by purchasing a theme versus paying a designer to build this all for you?

Plus now you know you can do it again and again if you want to.

To put it to the test, we set out to build another site and see how far we could take it in less than 24 hours. The results were startling.

Enter thedirectorsnotes.com. TDN is the website we’ve been using to build our tutorials and screencasts, but for this experiment we decided to build it out. This is a look at it less than twenty-four hours after beginning work. Let’s take a look at the time and cost of each step.

1. Set up TDN and purchase domain and hosting – 15 minutes and just under $85
2. Purchase 80/20 WordPress Theme from ThemeForest.com – 10 minutes and $45
3. Install 80/20 Theme – 5 minutes
4. Fiddle with it to get the right look, install additional plugins, customize colors – 3 hours

Everything after that was populating content, which is a wash. So all in all we spent 3 hours and 30 minutes getting this thing to look like that, and it cost less than $130. That’s pretty impressive.

WordPress makes it easy, and customized themes from ThemeForest make it easy.

Have a success story to share? Leave it in the comments below.

What this means is that people who don’t have the time to mess around with the nuts and bolts of adjusting code and configuring things in php can buy this for $25 and save themselves a great deal of time. That’s a fair tradeoff, isn’t it?

Go there now to watch the live preview video of it in action.

Got any other great tips or tools? Share them in the comments!

Rest assured, you can expect us to plug in some of these plugins soon enough.

The subscription model is nothing new. Companies like Adobe, Netflix, Amazon (Prime), hey, even DollarShaveClub.com have successfully adopted it and proven that it works, so it was only a matter of time before Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon. And it looks like the price offerings are comparable to what you’d actually pay for it if you purchased and upgraded with every release.

But I’m conflicted on the matter. While the product becomes more up-front affordable, Office is something essential to business- most business- and now we’re all suddenly chained to this five-machine-per-license subscription (unless you pay the more expensive one-time fee for a one-machine-only license). And as I take on more subscriptions to essential products I realize it’s only a matter of time before I’m going to have to weigh “need versus want” with my subscriptions. Before long it might be goodbye Spotify, hello Adobe. And that’s not a game anyone wants to play.

What do you think? Is this the right direction for companies to take? Unlimited updates as long as you continue to pay the subscription price each month? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

[via Gizmodo]

WordPress makes posting blog entries easy, but what if you want to write a bunch of articles ahead of time and post later? In this screencast we show you how to schedule a post that goes live automatically when you tell it to.

This.

We want you to be able to build your own site for the least amount of money in the least amount of time.

The other day we came across this:

If you don’t have your own website yet, you probably should- even if it’s just YOURNAME.com. Better you own the rights to it than someone else.

Remember that scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruise is getting eye scanned by about a million tiny cameras, then ads custom tailored to him and/or his demographic would play in his mind? Enter PrimeSense.

In case there’s any confusion, this is a real thing, and this is going to be a part of life before we care to admit. Already Walmart scanners can tell when you walk by and play ads accordingly- this is no different. Except it’s much more intense.

Creepy factor aside, it’s not all bad and there will be some very cool practical applications for the technology (as shown in the video). Want to try on on a shirt? Why not just stand in front of the PrimeSense camera and see how it fits on you? Build it into video games? Sure. You can actually BE the character you’re playing.

So there are pros and cons. It’s going to be up to the people wielding the tech to make sure your rights to privacy are protected- which, historically speaking- they typically aren’t.

Thoughts on PrimeSense? Leave them in the comments below!

In a nutshell, Rapportive places a sidebar on the right side or your Gmail screen when you’re reading an email. That sidebar displays a picture of the sender and taps into their publicly viewable social media feeds to give you a snapshot of who’s emailing you on the other end- whether you’re connected to them via social media or not.

The obvious benefits stand out when you think of Craigslist or other sites where strangers solicit you uninvited. In a world of Nigerian Princes who all want me to unwittingly give up my personal information, I find a little extra comfort in Rapportive.

[get Rapportive here]

WE INTERRUPT THIS NORMALLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM FOR A CREEPER ALERT
Yes, that means that there may be plenty of Johns and Janes out there already using Rapportive to feed them info about you on their end. I’m one of them.

If you’re worried about oversharing, the best solution is to limit what’s publicly viewable about you online- if you’re concerned with that sort of thing. But consistent adherence to smart personal information sharing rules should keep you out of hot water.

What cool tools do you have added to your Gmail account to make it more powerful? Leave them in the comments below!