(1) At present we do have the ability to make multiple categories widgets. They have the option of being a drop down, and we can choose to show or not show hierarchy and post count. However, here’s the glitch. Each and every additional categories widget we create is a clone of the first one.
I ask you: How is that useful? And what is it useful for?
Many of us are still scratching our heads and wondering when we will receive an explanation of why this is so.
You see what wp.com bloggers (aside from the VIP bloggers) wanted was the ability to section their categories into more than one widget and place them in different locations in their sidebars. Examples: Categories1 – News; Categories2 -Sports; Categories3 – Weather. And that’s not what we got.
(2) We also wanted the ability to have “tags” that would direct to our other posts with the same tags on our own blogs. But, once again, we didn’t get what we expected. We got tags that direct to the same place the categories direct to ie. to the global wordpress.com tag pages. The only exceptions may be private and mature content blogs. (See comment below.)
I ask you: How is that redirect to the global tag pages useful when it comes to directing readers to the other posts with the same tag on your blog? As the tagging system doesn’t do that then what useful purpose does tagging achieve? Who benefits from this strange reversal and how?
You’re back up! Yay!
I am perplexed too. I kept my categories and use tags (sparingly) as extra categories or a further definition of a category. I don’t want to have to fix something that’s not broken. Yet.
Thanks for noticing my url change. Hopefully, others will notice and update their links to my blog as well.
This blog is only partly up and running. Unfortunately the exporter for links was not working so I’m having to input them all again. :( And as it’s really busy in our business and on the home front right now I’m doing that in fits and starts. As far as tags go I’m going to use them on this blog but not on my others.
private blogs get their own tags (but are also not indexed by search engines), mature blogs still feed global tags (despite their own posts not showing up on global tag pages)
@sunburntkamel
Thanks for clarifying that.
Glad you’re still around. You are a great source of information for wordpress bloggers – beginners and experts alike.
For the life of me I can’t figure out why wordpress is unwilling to explain the many mysteries we run into on a daily basis. Their silence on subjects such as multiple category widgets simply does not reflect well on them and leaves users scratching their heads.
I’ve changed the link to you on my blog.
Wow! Thanks for the compliment.
In this case I don’t think there is any indication that TPTB want to tell us how these multiple widgets are intended to be used. I guess it’s a “secret”. ;-)