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Friday, November 15, 2013

Blog Label Bloat

When we started The Frog & PenguINN blog over 2 years ago, it was not done with a lot of advance planning. Consequently, as we kept adding posts, Grenville and I would separately assign labels to our individual posts.blog labels

One thing we never considered was a “master” labels (post categories) listing beforehand. That would have required advance planning, which we do for other things, but didn’t for the blog.

Big HUGE mistake as we now know as we have a lot of labels (referred to on the F&P blog as What We Blog About) for the same topic — for example, New Jersey, NJ and NJ trip when just NJ would have been shorter and easier. Similarly there were posts with a label of crockpot; others with crock pot.

BIG ? was how could labels be deleted once created?

Easy, peasy as I learned by experimenting, otherwise called playing around. Here’s what to do: at the top of the blog window, select Design, when the next screen displays, select Posts and on the top right side, select Labels. A drop down box shows all the post labels, each has a number to show how many posts use that  label. Click on the label to see only posts with that label.

To delete, add, or change labels, select Edit under each post and then choose a different label from your master labels list. Click Update to save the post, then continue with the next one that has the same label.

Using the NJ example above, I selected all posts with a New Jersey label and changed each to NJ.

When there are NO posts with a specific label, it will not display under Labels. This can take awhile, depending on HOW many labels you want to chance or delete.

This is what worked for our blog created with Blogger. I’m not sure if the procedure would be similar procedure (or easier) with a in WordPress created blog.

If anyone has a better — easier would be good too — solution to Label Bloat, please let me know because this is gonna take awhile.

13 comments:

Ludwig said...

You can do a similar process for managing "tags" as "labels" are called over on WordPress. There is an additional feature at WordPress called "category" and you can have pages for specific categories, that can be a huge advantage for some blogs.

Your suggestion of working the label list down is a good one as the sidebar presents a lot of "gray". It will keep you busy on long winter nights!

Country Gal said...

Glad you got it sorted out ! At first Papa had it being labeled but only on his computer so he had to change something with his computer to stop it as when I went on my blogs on my computer it never showed any labels . Modern technology makes ya go HUH !! Thanks for sharing the info . Have a good weekend !

William Kendall said...

I label every post with at least something, though I don't put it out in the open. I've seen a few bloggers who do.

Out on the prairie said...

I go with titles but not sure if I am labeled.LOL

Doris said...

I never bothered with labels....but I think if I had, I would be in the same spot as you find yourself! Happy organizing =)

Anvilcloud said...

Although I labelled (tagged) a bit when the feature was first introduced, I can't be bothered with labels. If one was a mega blogger (one of the biggies), I can see that it might be helpful.

Montanagirl said...

I label my posts too, but it's cumbersome, and I'm not so sure I'm going to keep doing it.

Anonymous said...

I wish I could do something like that when it comes to my internet bank. There are lots of old account numbers I don't use any longer but I just can't remove them. Not the biggest problem in the World but annoying enough :-)

Have a great day!
Christer.

MadSnapper said...

i did the same thing you did, no advance planning, and there is only ME doing it not like two of you. i started organizing like you described here.. and then decided it was to much work. that was last year. now that you mention it, i should do a few more... it is not fun and boring but it needs to be done. i even found I had hibiscus, Hibiscus, Red Hibiscus and Orange Hisbicus

Emma Springfield said...

I dearly love your post title. Blog Label Bloat. I sympathize. I wish there could be sub-labels within a larger label category but then that would make it even more confusing, wouldn't it?

Connie said...

That happened to me on my old blog too. On my current blog, I label my posts, but I don't have the labels where others can see them. That way, someone searching for that subject on Google could make their way to the post, but it doesn't take up space on my sidebar.

jp@A Green Ridge said...

I could have told you that if you'd asked!!!... :)JP

Latane Barton said...

I evidently started blogging without a plan, too. And, I have a bunch of labels that I never have used but once. How nice of you to figure out how I can delete them!! SWEET. Thank you.