What are tags and categories?

Tags are like index keywords that you and others assign to content and use to look for content. When you create or edit content, you can assigned tags to the content to describe it for people who might search for it later. One way to do this is to ask yourself what tags you would use to look for this content if you were searching for it.

Categories are words or phrases predefined by administrators, usually in a way that's specific to a particular place (a space or social group, for example). If there are categories available in the place, it usually means that the place's administrator has given thought to ways that the place's content should be grouped. When an administrator creates a category, they can optionally associate certain tags with it behind the scenes. If they have, and you type any of those tags in the Tags box, you'll see that category's name highlighted. This is a cue to consider assigning your content to the category.

How do I apply tags and categories?

You can assign tags and categories to content when you're creating or editing it.

To assign tags to your content:

Open the content for editing and scroll to the bottom of the page.
Beneath the editing window, in the Tags box, type the tags you want to assign to the content (be sure to use underscores to separate words in tags that have more than one word). Pay attention to whether any of the tags you enter cause categories (if there are any) to be highlighted; if so, considering assigning your content to highlighted categories.
Where possible, it's best to use tags that already exist. That way, you stand a better chance of assigning tags that people are already familiar with and that might be assigned to related content. The easiest way to apply existing tags is to just click the name of a tag in Popular Tags list; if you know the name of an existing tag (or if it's not listed), you can also just type it.

To assign your content to categories:

Open the content for editing and scroll to the bottom.
Beneath the editing window, under Categories, you might see a list of categories that have been defined for the place in which the content lives. Select check boxes for the categories in which your content seems to belong.