Categories: Ready to Go This Week

A few weeks ago, we announced that categories were coming to HubPages.  We were delightfully surprised by the strong, positive response.  If you click on the announcement link, you can see the discussion that occurred.  You can also click on any of the categories (such as “Arts & Crafts”) to see the subcategories proposed and the comments we received.

I thought that it would be valuable to address the questions and concerns in today’s blog.

When will the categories officially launch?

This week.  Possibly tonight.  There will be an announcement when they go out.  When you go to “My Account”, you will see a “Categories” link.

Can a hub be in more than one category and/or subcategory?

A hub can only be in one category at a time.  You can change the category later if you decide another category fits better.

Will we have to go back and add all the current hubs to these categories?

We will be providing tools to help categorize existing hubs.  We are trying to make it as painless as possible.  We hope everyone will want to categorize because like tagging it will help improve traffic to your hub.

Other web sites have categories and it gets frustrating when no category fits.  If you have to email and wait, it can be frustrating.

Categories are not perfect.  You still have tagging available if the categories don’t work.  We have over 6000 categories available on the first release and we will add more as needed.

Can we have a Miscellaneous or Other top level category?

From my view, this would defeat our purpose of using categories.  The goal is to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find your exact hub.  Miscellaneous or Other would really be the same as an uncategorized hub.

Categories can slow things down.  We used categories at another web site and there were never enough categories and it got frustrating because it was not always clear which was the right category to use.

We are aware of this experience on other category sites.  We have tried to make it as easy as possible to select the right category.  You can change it at any time.  We will have a tool that makes suggestions on categories.

We have tried very hard to pick the right categories.  We’ll see how we did.

Don’t tags make categories irrelevant.

We started HubPages with tags only.  Based on this experience, we believe that categories are needed too.  I’ve already written on this topic in a previous blog.

Can HubPages have a Photo Gallery category so that photo hubs don’t get mixed up with articles?

Yes.  We have a Photos & Videos category in Entertainment for this purpose.

I love writing on a special topic which I do not yet find in your categories.  Are you open to adding it?

Absolutely.  Please post any questions that you have to the forums.  We’ll help you find a category that works.  If none of the existing categories work, we’re open to adding more categories.  You can always change the category later.

So, what are the planned top level categories?

Here is the revised top level categories based on the feedback that we received:

• Arts & Crafts
• Automotive
• Books & Writing
• Business & Jobs
• Entertainment
• Fashion & Beauty
• Food
• Games, Toys, & Hobbies
• Gender & Relationships
• Health
• Holidays & Special Occasions
• Home & Family
• HubPages
• Knowledge & Education
• Personal Finance
• Pets & Animals
• Politics & Issues
• Religion & Beliefs
• Sports & Recreation
• Technology
• Travel & Places

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and comments.