How to Show Category and Tag Descriptions In WordPress Theme
WordPress lets you add a short description to the categories as well as to the post tags of your blog. Here is a brief tutorial to show the category and tag descriptions in your WordPress theme.
Why category and tag descriptions? You may ask. Adding descriptions to category and tag pages has two advantages. First, the reader of your blog can have a rough idea on the type of posts are covered in a particular category. Second, you can show the category and tag descriptions as meta description on the respective pages which may help for better SEO. (see example)
Show Category Description in Category Pages Of WordPress Theme
1. First, add a description to your categories from WordPress Dashboard > Categories.
2. Open your FTP client, browse to your WordPress theme directory and download the archive.php file for editing. Better, create a backup of the archive.php file to be safe.
3. You will see a code block like the following:
4. Paste the following code just below it.
<?php $description=category_description(); echo $description; ?>
<?php } ?>
The above code pulls the category description that you entered in step 1 and displays the same to the user.
5. For the meta description part, add the following code before the </head> tag in your WordPress theme.
if (is_category()) { ?>
<meta name=”description” content=”<?php $description=category_description(); echo $description; ?>” />
<?php } ?>
Note: Using All in one Seo pack plugin may override the above code.
Show Tag Descriptions in Tag Pages Of WordPress Theme
To show the tag descriptions, follow steps 1, 2 and 3 as described in previous section and then continue with what follows next.
4. Paste the following code to show tag descriptions in every tag page.
You do not need to fill out each and every tag to use the above code. If a tag does not have any description, the above code shows nothing. (see example)
5. To display the tag descriptions as meta descriptions, put the following code before </head> in your WordPress theme.
<meta name=”description” content=”<?php echo wp_specialchars( strip_tags( tag_description() ), 1 ); ?>” />
<?php endif; ?>
Tip: How to show meta description as post excerpts in blog’s index page.
Styling Category and Tag descriptions
To style the category and tag descriptions, all you have to do is include a unique class just before the description field.
For example:
Now, write the attributes of the div class in the style.css file of your WordPress theme.
Would love to hear your thoughts on the topic.
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I searched on how to add Category Descriptions, this page came up, and the instructions were really easy to follow.
Thanks very much, I am hoping that this will help improve the SEO ranking of the Category and Tag pages on my sites, if only slightly.
Thanks Tony for your comment. Adding category and Tag descriptions is not a must, but may help in SEO and above all it serves the user.
Thank you for the informative post!
I was wondering if you know how to echo images, links, and other html with the tag_description(); ?
I use the Rich Text Tag plugin so that I can easily add in images and links, but when I make the echo call, it strips these out. Any ideas?
Much thanks!
@matt: DO you use the echo codes from theme files or from WYSWYIG editor ?
I use the echo codes from the template files.