The most powerful organization tool in Squarespace
Using categories is the most powerful organization tool in Squarespace! It can be an underused tool that can save a lot of time and hassle organizing your blog, products, events or images in a gallery.
Wondering how this can help you? Here are three of my favorite tricks to use categories for:
Create primary navigation links that show ONLY posts/products/events/images in a certain category (no more making multiple blog pages for each category you write about!)
Show only a certain category in a summary block on any page (for instance, show off your 3 latest posts in “fashion” on your homepage)
Create sub-navigation links on a gallery, blog, events or product page that give specific categories (for instance, on my custom website portfolio page, I show several categories to look at with a second navigation at the top of the page)
Let’s dive in to how to use categories!
Where to add a category in a blog post, product or event
Where to add a category in an image gallery
a quick intro to categories
Categories can be used for blog posts, images added to a gallery page, products and events to organize the content. You can name your categories anything you want and then easily select any category you’ve previously created on any post. Categories are usually broad topics such as “fashion” for a style blog or “weddings” for a photographer. You can also add tags which are much more specific about that post/image (location, colors, etc) for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes.
In a blog post, product or event, the category button will be in the bottom left of the “edit post” screen.
On an image, the category button is in the bottom half of the “content” tab of the image settings (to get to your image settings, hover over the photo and click on the settings wheel).
Each individual blog page or gallery page will have a different set of categories. For instance, If you have a gallery page called “weddings” and create a category on that page called “outdoor”, that same category wouldn’t appear on a separate gallery page you may have called “engagements”.
You can manage your categories at anytime be clicking on the settings wheel of the blog or gallery page, navigate to the Advanced tab and click on “Manage Categories”. You can edit the name or delete any category.
three ways to use categories
You’ve added your categories to your blogs, products, events or images and you are ready to use them! Here are my 3 favorite ways.
1. Create primary navigation links that show ONLY posts/images in a certain category
Under Pages click the “+” next to Primary Navigation
Choose “Link” as the page type
Type in the name of the category you want in your navigation under “Link Title”
Click the Settings Wheel next to “Link”
Under the “Link Editor” window choose “Page” on the left side
Type in the name of the your page (either blog or gallery) and select it
Choose the category you want under the “Categories” section
Click “Save” in the upper left hand corner of the Link Editor window
Now your navigation link is linked to only show that specific category of your blog / images!
2. Show only a certain category of posts/images in a summary block on any page
On any page, add a new content block by clicking the sideways tear drop
Under “Summary” choose a layout type you like (the most common way to do this is the carousel design)
Choose the page you want display content from (either a blog page, gallery page, product page or event page)
Under the “Layout” tab at the top you can go through all your design options of how you want it to look. Play with the styles and see what each does!
Under the “Display” tab, scroll to the bottom to “Category Filter” and type in the category you want to appear. You can also choose a specific tag.
BONUS: You can also choose the “Featured Filter” in summary blocks. A way to use this would be if you wanted to choose which “featured” posts you want to show on your homepage instead of just one category. To use this, navigate to the “Option” tab of the Edit Post or Edit Image window and click on “Featured”.
3. Create sub-navigation links on a gallery, products, events or blog page that give specific categories
Navigate to the “Pages” tab and go to your blog or gallery page
Hover over the top of the page right under your logo and find the INTRO tab and click “EDIT”
Type in whatever categories you want to be navigated to here. You can also type a welcome message above that says something like “welcome to the blog!” or “my portfolio” - whatever the page may be!
TIP: I usually type in my categories with a • or | between them. For instance:
CREATIVE | BLOG | WEDDING
Highlight the text of the first category and click the “Link” button in the text editing tab (right between the Italic button and the left aligned button")
Click the settings wheel
Under the “Link Editor” window choose “Page” on the left side
Type in the name of the page you want to link to (either blog or gallery) and select it
Choose the category you want under the “Categories” section
Click “Save” in the upper left hand corner of the Link Editor window
I hope these quick tips gave you some major organization ideas for your website!
Let me know if you have any questions - I’m always happy to help!
