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Hi guys!

I’ve sifted through the support documents and the forums and I can’t find anything that explains to me what categories are for.

There’s plenty of information explaining how to create, edit and manage categories, but I can’t find anything that simply and clearly explains what they’re used for.

Any information would be much appreciated!

You can use them for whatever you like, really. They are just that, ways of categorizing your data. You can then display one ore more categories in your templates.

Hi Ingmar and thanks for the reply!

The thing that’s throwing me off is the talk of HTML options; why would I need HTML for a categories?

And why would I want to associate custom fields with a category?

I’m from a WordPress background and categories are very simple creatures. Expression Engine appears to have some kind of hybrid that I just can’t make sense of.

When you say “whatever you like”, do you have any examples in mind?

The thing that’s throwing me off is the talk of HTML options; why would I need HTML for a categories?

Can you be more specific? A link, perhaps?

And why would I want to associate custom fields with a category?

You could have a custom field for every category. Again, do with it whatever you need it for. I have used it to assign translated / explained category names to it, even color codes.

When you say “whatever you like”, do you have any examples in mind?

One very common use is to build navigational structures, menus and sub menus, etc. or to simply categorize your content.

Can you be more specific? A link, perhaps?

Here in create a new category group.

You could have a custom field for every category. Again, do with it whatever you need it for. I have used it to assign translated / explained category names to it, even color codes.

But why use a category for something like that when you could just as easily create a custom field? This is precisely what I don’t understand; there has to be some clear distinction between the two.

One very common use is to build navigational structures, menus and sub menus, etc. or to simply categorize your content.

That would be of no use to me, since any navigation I’ll be adding will be based on and populated by the sections and content pages of the website itself.

You don’t have to use categories just because they’re there. =)

Categories allow you to group similar data together, and to give that data a hierarchy. That can be very useful on a great many sites, but it’s certainly not relevant on all sites.

Categories are also very useful for sites with archives. Organization is a key component of any competent site. By grouping content together categorically you can provide your users with ways to narrow their vision to what they are looking for, making their overall experience a better one in most cases. 😊

I explain Categories as content filters. 

EE"s categories have their roots in the blogging market that EE was born out of.  Imagine coming to a weblog that has a long scrolling index page with dozens of posts from a bunch of topic(my job, my life, my kids, my car, my parents, my health insurance).  In the sidebar is a list of categories that, when clicked, reloads the current page but with only the posts assigned to the selected category.

That’s really their functionality at it’s simplest. 

The HTML comes into play when you start adding category descriptions (in the above scenario imagine a new heading appearing after selecting the “my kids” category: “Hey - These are all the entries where I talk about my kids.”  The HTML settings are configuring EE for what you want to allow for HTML in that description.

Think of category custom fields as being able to add meta-data about the category itself.  Sometimes just a name, description and photo aren’t enough.  What if your categories were product categories, and each product category had a different contact/line manager?  Use a custom category field for their name and phone number.

Or what if you wanted to translate your category names into different languages?  Another custom category field could hold the French words for “my kids”.

That would be of no use to me, since any navigation I’ll be adding will be based on and populated by the sections and content pages of the website itself.

I’d suggest that if you are still thinking of your site in terms of sections and pages then you haven’t fully grasped EE yet.  Think in terms of content types mapped to templates.  Templates will create the pages, and one template can create >1 page for each content type.  If you are building templates to match a page structure you’ll usually end up with way more templates than is necessary.

Categories can come in handy if you have sections of content with more than 1 layer of depth. 

For example - this client sells products that all organize under different sizes.  So you can buy connectors but it might be 3/4” or 1” etc? 

The Products Index page lists the available categories:

http://www.estoconnectors.com/index.php/connectors/

Choosing a category gets you thumbnails for all products in the category:
http://www.estoconnectors.com/index.php/connectors/thumbs/category/34-inch-square/

Then clicking a thumbnail gets you the detail for that specific product:
http://www.estoconnectors.com/index.php/connectors/detail/pn-521075sp1/

Behind the scenes there are 3 templates (index, category, detail) responsible for generating dozens of “pages” - but the client doesn’t worrry about the pages.  He just enters a product and assigns it to the right category, and EE either adds that product content to an existing “page” or generates a new page for it when requested.

Boyink! thanks for the in-depth reply! I really appreciate that.

That’s the kind of information that ought to be in the documentation.

Also, I can now see how that might make sense for my client, but not in directly the same as the examples you provided, though they are very useful, so thanks again.

As for the navigation thing, I’m still new to Expression Engine, but I think I’ve got a fix on the template-to-channel philosophy. So I shouldn’t be creating endlessly repetitious templates. With the plan I’ve got for the underlying architecture, there will only be between 1-3 templates for the products pages, while the channels will be the work horses of the website.

The navigation will come directly out of the product data itself, so neither I or anyone else has to get involved updating it.

But, if there’s a simpler way, I’m totally open to suggestions!

That would make a great user comment in the user guide. =)

Wayne, I suggest you check out the tutorials and screencasts from Mike Boyink, Train-ee.com. They’re really excellent - and help you save a lot of time on working out how to mold EE.
K