Posted May 15th, 2008, in: Computer Problems and Fixes

If you mistakingly used the WordPress “feature” “convert categories to tags,” and then realized that you just threw away all of your categories, do not fear.

ankurb.info, or “Needlessly Messianic” has a solution for you.  Thanks, philanthropic wordpress community member!  

…Let’s all take a moment to realize the value in posting solutions to our own tech problems online, for the sake of the community, and if you’re a cynical bastard, for our own interests as traffic mongers in the Social Web…

I’m not going to quote the solution here.  Go read Ankur Banerjee’s blog and learn what to do with your MySQL Admin tools to fix yourself up.

What if you’re blogging on WordPress.com?  I am in the same boat.  No access to my database because I’m blogging for free here at wordpress.com.  

Here’s my response to Ankur’s post.

I agree that it sucks. No warning and then bam, one of your best navigational features is destroyed (categories listed at the bottoms of posts).

I just accidentally did this too, but I’m currently on a wordpress.com blog…

I really appreciate that you took the time to post this fix.

Unfortunately it wont help me. I’m trying to find a script or something to hack the wordpress.com export file ( WordPress eXtended RSS or WXR), so I can re-import it and have my categories back. Let me know if you know of anything.

Really, I think WP has made a few unwise decisions recently. The first was to insert automatically generated tags (based on users’ cat names) at the bottoms of our posts so when someone clicks on them, rather than seeing the posts by that blogger under that tag or category, the reader is taken to WP’s blog-surfing, technorati-like blog search results. I’m so disappointed, but I can’t move to my own hosting a for a month or two. In the meantime, My blog’s navigation is destroyed. So sad.

I’m determined to get one of my smart friends to help me with a script that will re-write the wordpress export file, turning the tags for each post back into categories, so I can re-import everything and be back where I was, back when I had functioning categories.  If you’re waiting for a solution to this problem, message me privately and I will let you know when I get it squared away.

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