As outlined above, (among other areas) categories are mostly used for for Articles, Weblinks, Contacts, Diary/Calendars, Banners and DropFiles and Galleries.
When you work in these areas of the site, each will have its own category creation option, but they are all very similar in how they work.
Sometimes it is useful to have categories within categories or sub-categories. This sub-category idea leads us to consider the 'Parent' & 'Child' category hierarchy. For example, here is a way you might categorise content about birds and plants.
- Create two Parent Categories called "Animals" and "Plants".
- Create two Child Categories called "Birds" and "Mammals" and put these in the "Animals" category.
- Create two Child Categories called "Trees" and "Flowers" and put these under the "Plants" category.
So, the arrangement of these categories would be:
- Animals
- Birds
- Mammals
- Plants
- Trees
- Flowers
You certainly don't have to use sub-categories but in some cases it’s useful.
No matter where you work within the website control panel, creating content categories is pretty much ubiquitous! Most of the pages you see just wouldn't work without them, so even if you only create one or two categories to hold everything (and that's quite common), you still need to understand they are important.