On World Anvil, categories are organizational units that contain articles. They also make up your world’s Table of Contents on the home page. But categories are also powerful worldbuilding tools in their own right.
Contents
Managing Categories on World Anvil
How to create a category
A category can be created in the Articles tab or with the Green Hammer button:
- Click the green hammer button at the bottom right
- Select Category
- Fill in the quick form!
A newly created category does not appear in the table of contents because the category needs at least one subcategory or article to be visible.
For more details, check out:
Editing categories
You can quickly edit your categories in the Article edit interface.
Click on the + plus or - minus button to expand or minimize a category.
By clicking on the name of a category, you can expand its contents (articles and categories under it). With the +Article button at the top center of your screen, you can quickly create a new article under that category. You can also drag the articles under a category to arrange their order.
An article can only be in a single category, but categories can be inside other categories. You can control them from the panel on the left. Drag and nestle them under other categories to better organize your work.
By clicking on the name of a category, a panel will also open on the right. You can quickly edit the name of the category, its privacy state (as a Guild member), the excerpt, icon and add a subscriber group. If you click the ''Show additional options'' field, you can also quickly edit the parent category of this category and its position, as well as the button to order the articles under this category. You can also see the category tags available.
Delete a category
Be careful: deleting a category is irreversible—once it’s done, there’s no way to get it back.
You can also delete a category on this page. Click on the category you want to delete and a new panel will appear on the right (see screenshot above). Scroll down a bit and click the Delete button at the bottom.
Advanced edit: Advanced content in categories
You can edit your categories fully with more options, in the Advanced edit. To access it:
- Click on the name of your category
- On the right, you will see a new panel you can use to edit the category. Click the Advanced Edit button at the bottom.
In Advanced edit, each category has a number of editable fields and several options to configure how the category is displayed.
Basic Details
Under Basic Details, you can edit the name, icon and excerpt of the category. You can also set a Parent category and Redirect the category to an article.
Name
Edit the name of your category.
Icon
Add an icon to customize the appearance of the category in the table of contents, making it easier for you and your users to navigate. The icon appears on the category page itself, next to the category title. It also appears in the breadcrumb BBCode output.
Available icons are all of the icons from FontAwesome and RPG Awesome. Use the search on these pages to find an icon that fits the category.
Excerpt
The excerpt is a brief summary of the purpose of this category. Describe what it contains or why a user should look at it. It can be up to 256 characters. It is only displayed if a category is configured as a book or added as a book BBCode.
Parent Category
The parent category determines which category this category will be sorted into. A category without a parent is considered a top-level category and is visible on the homepage of your world.
Redirect to article
Available to the Grandmaster subscription tier and above. Upgrade here.
Add an article here for the category to redirect all users to this article when they click on a link that leads to the category. This setting can be used if the category itself doesn't have much content. Instead, make the article link to a browse page that leads to the articles within the category. It is important to add this article on the same level as the category, not in the category it is redirected from. Otherwise, the category link at the bottom of the article will redirect to itself.
Content
Content can be added to the description fields and one of five custom fields.
Description
The Description field is the main content field for the category. All text in this field is centered by default and appears below the category title. Add a short introduction of what this category is about.
Custom Content 1 - 5
Available to the Grandmaster subscription tier and above. Upgrade here.
Additional content fields that appear in different parts of the category structure. Use the design tab to organize these fields.
Design
Available to the Grandmaster subscription tier and above. Upgrade here.
The Design tab is used to move around the widgets in the category. Drag each widget to the section of the category where you want it to appear.
Click and hold anywhere on the dark sections and drag them on the containers. Each of the containers represent the placement of widgets on the category page. You have a header, which is positioned right under the description of your category and it covers the full width of the page, followed by three columns and a full-width footer. Make use of the Custom Content widgets to add anything you want on this page. To disable a section, drag a widget into the Unused Sections rectangle.
Display
Use this tab to change the appearance of category books and cover images.
- Visibility Settings: The first toggle replaces the category entry in the table of contents with a book cover link to the world homepage. This setting only applies to top-level categories. For other categories, check out how to embed categories as books. The second toggle can be used to remove the category title from the book cover.
- Book style cover: Add an image from the library or upload a new image to use as the book cover image.
- Page cover: This image will be used as the cover image on the category page itself.
- Default article category cover: Guild-only This image will be used as the cover image for all articles directly under this category. It does not affect child categories or any items under those categories. Any cover set directly on an article will take precedence.
- Additional CSS Classes: Guild-only These classes are applied to this category page. See the codex CSS guide for more information.
Access
Available to all Guild subscription tiers. Upgrade here.
A category can be set to private or public and can have subscriber groups. The subscriber groups option will only affect private articles.
You can also use the Category Presentation Snippets on the right of your screen. Click on the field to expand it, and see all the World Anvil Tags that you can use in your articles and other entities to link or display the contents of a specific category. For more information check out How to link to a category, How to use tables of contents and How to embed categories as books.
Other Options for Categories
World Configuration
There are some additional options in your World's Configuration page that affect how categories are displayed in your world's homepage. To access them click on World Settings on the left-hand sidebar menu, and then click on Configuration.
- Display Table of Contents: click on the Homepage tab and then the Display Options tab. Tick the checkbox to make the table of contents visible in view mode.
- Display Uncategorized Articles under the Table of Contents: on the same tab, tick this checkbox to view your uncategorized articles under the table of contents.
- Table of Contents Placement: click on the Homepage tab and then the Placement tab. You can choose to place your table of contents on either the left, center or right column in the dropdown.
