7 Easy Steps for Adding Categories to Blogger

Sooner or later, Blogger will need wake up and smell the WordPress, and add categories and tags -- this is considered essential blog functionality these days!

However, since I've been using Blogger since 2001, and I've hacked my template way beyond the blog-standard, my blog has come to feel like a comfy pair of well-worn jeans.

So here's yet another hack to add a list of categories...

1. First, set up a new del.icio.us account. Even if you have an existing account, you'll want a new one or else you will spam your list full of links to your own blog.

2. Next, I'd recommend downloading the del.icio.us extension for Mozilla Firefox. It makes tagging pages much easier.

3. Here comes the unpleasant part (especially if you have 300+ blog entries like I do) -- you'll need to go through your archives and tag every entry you've made. The upshot of this is that it's a nice way to look back on your blog and make sense of it all.

4. Given that your tag-space may evolve as you go along, it's a good idea to open your del.icio.us account and consolidate your tags into a controlled vocabulary -- suitable for the higher-level categories you'll need for navigation. Barring that, you can adjust your tagroll later to filter out the lesser-used tags.

5. Go to del.icio.us/help/tagrolls/ and adjust the appearance of your tags. I'd recommend keeping the min and max font size identical, as it will give it the appearance of category links.

6. Copy the code from the del.icio.us page, and paste it into a new module in your template, alongside the main content.

7. Republish your blog.