How to Create a New Post Category in WordPress

Categories in WordPress provide a simple way for you to organize the posts that you write. You can then include categories in your navigational menus, and people can browse the posts on your website based upon the categories into which you have sorted them.

But WordPress needs a little direction from you when it comes to categorization, and the first step requires you to create some categories. Our guide below will walk you through the process of adding a new category to your site.

How to Create a New Category for Your Posts in WordPress

The steps below will show you how to create a brand new category into which you can place your posts.

Step 1: Sign into the admin section of your WordPress site.

Step 2: Hover over Posts in the left menu, then click the Categories option.

Step 3: Type the name of your new category into the Name field, enter a URL slug for the category (This is optional. WordPress will automatically create a slug, but you can customize it to be something specific), set a parent category and description (These settings are also optional.), then click the Add New Category button to create it.

You can also create new categories form directly within the post interface. Simply create a new post, then click the Add New Category link in the Categories widget at the right side of the window.

You can then set a name for the new category, set a parent category if desired, then click the Add New Category button.

Now that you have created your own custom post category in WordPress, you can choose to set it as the default category for all of your new posts. This is a great idea if you have added the category to your navigation menu, and are worried that you might accidentally forget to check the category box when you write a post.