Blog Azeroth

For most of my (nonwow) blogging career I didn't tag or categorize posts, because I was hosted on a teeny tiny unheard of domain that didn't offer it, so I didn't worry about it. However, in the last few years it's become "the thing" to do and I will admit that it does help with categorization and searching.

However - do you use both? In wordpress(.com) if you tag your posts, is that what will trigger and sort the "possibly related posts" selection?

And for my layout specifically (and others like it, I suppose) if I have a ton of categories, would the extra-large box at the bottom of the post be distracting? And I say this because the more tags you use, the better?

Do you have a ton of categories to cover every single thing, or do you choose to use fewer, more general, categories?

I usually use categories as big, top-level organization, and tags as a way to get a little more specific. For example, I have "Raiding Ruminations" as a category, and things like "Sartharion" and "Naxxramas" as tags.

It all depends on what you mean by a "ton" of tags/categories, but I don't think you need to worry about it too much. The idea is to organize things, though, so you wouldn't want so many that someone would get overwhelmed and have a hard time finding what they're looking for.

I don't use the "related posts" plugin, so I'm not sure how it selects those.

Like Liore mentioned, I use broader categories and then tags to be more search specific.

For a great resource on this topic, check out [Primer] Tags vs. Categories.

As for me, I used tags when I was originally hosted with Blogger (they didn't have categories) and replaced them with categories when I switched to self-hosted WordPress. I found tags were a little more overhead to keep up with, but they are probably helpful for search engine optimization.

I am lazy and don't use tags... I wouldn't be surprised if it did affect search engine hits, since the only search terms people ever use to come to my blog are my name and the name of my blog.

I use categories so that people can easily find posts on something (especially if they are after a particular post). While it is probably more important for people who write informative posts and guides, I like to think that it helps anyway.

Categories are things I try to use sensibly, tags are where I really go to town on crazy specific words and phrases. You'd be surprised how many searches pick up on the tags - just stuff like 'is the argent crusade run by idiots' or 'lesbian ninja catgirls' (I think that was in an old post about second life)

So I find that categories are probably way more useful to people looking for similar posts that I've written on their topics (and I try to use them carefully to help that). Tags could take you anywhere

I tend to use very generic "catch-all" categories (such as "Healing", "Tanking", "Leveling", "Instances", etc) as much as possible, and use tags to get more detailed with organization.

Tags and categories are a good way to make it easier for visitors to navigate your site based on their personal interests or needs. It increases time on site when visitors, especially those new to blogs, don't have to spend too much time hunting for the information they want. Most related post widgets run off tags, so the more detailed and specific you make your tags, the more accurate those results will be. Also, tags and categories can help with search engine optimization if you're using strong keywords.

It helps to think of post categories (and pages) as sections of more traditional web sites, and tags as brief descriptions of each article based solely on keywords.

These things aren't necessary, but can be very convenient for visitors and don't require much time investment on your end.

That's pretty much how I go about things and find it works quite well. I find the tags I use if appropriate to the content of the post really help to bring in extra 'drive by' traffic from Search Engines too.

Mostly what folks have said here. There's a tendency to use tags for whimsical commentary too, not unlike the Slashdot "from the x department" tag.'

I think of tags more as keywords or advertising for my posts.

Categories should reflect your information structure, like the way a library is organised.

Tags are about themes, or topics, that could appear in books on any shelf. They do help Google.