Misdirected category link
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In my posts, when I click on the category link, I want all posts on that website that are under that category to show up. I recently did that, successfully, but then I tried it again, and it went to a list of other blogs under that category.
What is going on?
Appreciate any help.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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This is normal behavior. All category and Tags links in sidebar widgets direct only to posts in your own blogs. But category and tags links on your posts direct to the WordPress.com global tag pages. Please read this entry. http://en.support.wordpress.com/global-tags/
If you wish there is a theme you can use called iNove which has theme options that allow you to suppress the display of both categories and tags. It’s the only theme here that has that feature.
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This is seriously frustratingly counter-intuitive behaviour. The page says “Posted under category: Conference”. But if you click on Conference, you don’t get my category Conference, you get some other blog advertising “Low Price Polycom VoiceStation 100 Conference Phone System Best Deal”.
That is absolutely not what my visitors want or are expecting.
I quote:
examples of misuse include:
Using misleading or irrelevant tags
Posting affiliate links, marketing material, duplicate or low quality contentThe link is misleading, and the content linked to is irrelevant, low quality marketing.
I’m sure there are people out there who are looking for the best deal on Polycom VoiceStation 100 Conference Phone Systems, but they aren’t going to be looking for it in my blog. My users are interested in one specific conference and you’ve turned my ‘category’ into a travesty.
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I cannot help with this when I click the Category link on your Categories Archives Conference page it directs to the global tagging pages as I expect it to do. The featured blog on the top of that page is the one your describe. I believe your ought to report this other blog advertising “Low Price Polycom VoiceStation 100 Conference Phone System Best Deal” to Staff. Here’s the link for making a report http://en.wordpress.com/report-spam/?url=phoneconferencings.wordpress.com
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Your functionality is broken. This is not a feature. It is a bug.
I’m sure that WP’s POV this is an attempt to be helpful, and introduce my users to new and exciting and interesting blogs they wouldn’t otherwise visit. But that’s the point, they wouldn’t otherwise visit where those links are pointing to, they don’t want to, and I don’t want them to. It doesn’t do my users any good, it doesn’t do the other blogs any good.
Nor is incoming traffic from blogs that are interested in (say) conference equipment going to do me any good – totally totally the wrong audience.
I think I can see a workaround, which I hope will work because my first thought was “oh sh!t, I’m going to have move the blog somewhere else”.
This is not tolerable.
I need the functionality categories provide and I can’t afford to have half my users directed somewhere random just because they’ve clicked on what looks like an internal link, but isn’t. I will report back.
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this is a peer support forum and I am a Volunteer. Please contact Staff with your feedback on the global tag pages. http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
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Workaround: choose tags that are so specific that if anyone else uses them, they are reasonably likely to mean the same thing – i.e. not “conference” but “NSW ALP State Conference”.
Let me repeat. This is not a feature. It is a bug, and a bad one. -
Your choice of categories and tags you assign to your posts is strictly up to you. If your use a unique tag or category as you suggest above (note: they are treated the same way by WordPress.com and search engines) then your posts will be all alone on their uniquely named category or tag page in the WordPress.com global tag pages. i do not believe this is “a bug”. I have been here for 5 years and the searchbox contains numerous threads on this. I’m sorry I cannot be more helpful. We Volunteers simply answer questions. If you think this is ” bug” then please contact Staff http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/
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Apologies, ‘edit conflict’, posted previous before I saw your post, not a deliberate ignoring of your post.
Yes, thank you for your support – I’m not blaming you for this. This is just a real pain for me. I was that close to a major mail-out specifically linking to the category ‘Conference’, which would have left me in a real dilemma – change the category to something more specific and make a lie out of my own email (bad), or leave the category and leave the lying link at the bottom of each page in the category (also bad).
Even as is, I’m wondering if I’ve left any broken links lying around. Unlike page renames, renaming a category does not leave behind a permalink from the old name to the new name.
Cheers, Ben
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PS Interestingly, the recategorised pages don’t show up under a search for the new tag, do show up under a search for the old tag.
See, for eg: http://en.wordpress.com/tag/motions/
Even more interesting, in the list returned by the search, they are shown – with the new tag. So the search engine knows about both the old tag and the new tag and uses both of them for different purposes.
It’s quite possible that it only refreshes its indexes occasionally. If so, the posts should in time disappear from the old search, and start showing up in a search for the new tag. We’ll see. I guess it might be possible to ‘refresh’ them by removing and re-adding the tag, perhaps.
Software’s like that. You think you’ve thought of everything, and then your users find one more way to interact with your system that you have to deal with…
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Update FYI: having left it overnight, it has not updated the search with the new tags – everything can still be found at the old category. Moving a post to the default category then back to the new category does cause the page to show up at the new Global Tag.
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Wait.
There’s a MUCH easier way.
If you’ll notice, the category link in your sidebar Category widget goes to your local categories, ie excludes all other blogs. Just use that link. I use my local category link all the time in my blog posts and comments elsewhere and emails.
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Yes, that’s the behaviour I want. So I can invoke the desired behaviour. But I can’t see a way to properly stop the undesired behaviour happening if someone clicks on what looks like it should be another instance of the same behaviour.
I suppose I could use CSS to hide the fact that the 2nd category is a link – that would prevent most people from clicking on it and being sent who knows where. What I can’t see is a way to suppress the global tag, or to turn it into a local category lookup.
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There
s an easier way to do that, too, but its limiting.You can have all the links on your posts go to your local categories by doing one of the following:
1) switch to the iNove theme, which has this as an option
or
2) change your Privacy settings on the blog toInvisible to search engines but visible to regular readers.WordPress.com has good self-interested reasons to make it difficult to opt out of Global tags, and until last year the SEO boost was worth it, but they changed the way things work last year and now while you give Googlejuice to the global tag pages when you use a tag, it no longer counts as a Follow link back to you, so it does you basically no good at all.
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Okay, that`s an odd thing to happen with quotation marks. Oh well, does it read okay anyway
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