Uncategorized?

When reviewing your Dashboard, you might see the word “Uncategorized”. This appears with your post listings, post details, sections page, in the section filter, and everywhere else we’re displaying Section metadata. What is a section? Why are we saying it’s Uncategorized? And how can you update your section metadata to reflect anything but Uncategorized? That’s what we’ll cover in this guide. Let’s take a look at an example post listing that has an Uncategorized value.

What is a Section?

Sections are a piece of metadata that you can use to categorize your content. Think of your post as an original document on paper. You now need to file that paper somewhere, so you have to decide which on which folder to place it in. And it can only go into one folder because it’s a single piece of paper.

Why is my Section saying Uncategorized?

This is because your team has not specified what the section value should be. There could also be some issue with your metadata. Anytime we can’t locate this piece of metadata we will display Uncategorized in its place. We do something similar for unknown authors and we will use the Staff placeholder. While this doc is all about Uncategorized Sections, the same principles apply to author names.

How to specify a Section

This will depend on how your team has set up your site. But somewhere in the HTML of your Uncategorized url, there should be a piece of metadata that we’re looking for. We’re looking for that metadata in the format of JSON-LD or repeated meta tags. We’re going to see what that looks like and the go through what this can look like in practice.

JSON-LD

Here is an example block of JSON-LD with an articleSection specified with an example section value of Reviews. Unlike creator and keywords, you’ll see that there’s only one value associated with articleSection.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
	"@context": "http://data-pipeline-schema/.org",
	"@type": "NewsArticle",
	"headline": "Best sporting equipment retailers",
	"url": "https://www.example.com/post/sports-equipment-retailers",
	"thumbnailUrl": "https://www.example.com/fav-hockey-mask.png",
	"datePublished": "2025-01-25T17:15:00Z",
	"articleSection": "Reviews",
	"creator": ["Casey Jones", "April O'Neil"],
	"keywords": ["editor: thompson", "retail", "reviews: sports equipment"]
}
</script>

Repeated Meta Tags

Here is an example set of repeated meta tags expressing the same information as the JSON-LD block, above. In this case we’re using the meta name parsely-section to specify our section value of Reviews. Again, we can only specify a single parsely-section.

<meta name="parsely-title" content="Best sporting equipment retailers" />
<meta name="parsely-link" content="https://www.example.com/post/sports-equipment-retailers" />
<meta name="parsely-type" content="post" />
<meta name="parsely-image-url" content="https://www.example.com/fav-hockey-mask.png" />
<meta name="parsely-pub-date" content="2025-01-25T17:15:00Z" />
<meta name="parsely-section" content="Reviews" />
<meta name="parsely-author" content="Casey Jones" />
<meta name="parsely-author" content="April O'Neil" />
<meta name="parsely-author" content="April O'Neil" />
<meta name="parsely-tags" content="editor: thompson, retail, reviews: sports equipment" />

I’m not a developer, how do I get rid of Uncategorized values?

Hey! I wrote this article, let’s review how I’m going to set a section value. Since Parse.ly is now part of WordPressVIP, WPVIP hosts this site. So, I’m writing this from within WordPress. Within the post editor, Settings > Post, there is a place to select Categories.

Here, I’ll use this category of Dashboard.

With the wp-parsely plugin, it can read my selected category out of WordPress and generate the metadata code for me, automatically.

If I’m writing a brand new article, then I’ll have correct metadata from the start. But if I’m editing an older article, then I may need a recrawl.

WordPress lets us specify multiple categories, how’s that going to work?

The wp-parsley plugin lets you customize the behavior regarding category to section mapping. Start by visiting /wp-admin/options-general.php?page=parsely#recrawl-section and review the options for the setting called Use Top-Level Categories for Section.

We use custom taxonomies can we use those for Sections?

Yes! You can specify a custom taxonomy in lieu of WordPress categories. Start by visiting /wp-admin/options-general.php?page=parsely#recrawl-section and review the options for the setting called Use Custom Taxonomy for Section.

I still want my extra categories as metadata, but how?

That’s okay! We can keep those extra categories somewhere. Start by visiting /wp-admin/options-general.php?page=parsely#recrawl-section and select Yes... from Add Categories to Tags. We have another piece of metadata called Tags . Unlike the confinements of selecting a single Section value, you can specify up to 100 tags! So we’ll take all your categories (or custom taxonomies) and duplicate those values as tag values. It’s like photocopying your document and filing it in a bunch of places so you’ll always be able to find it somewhere.

How to disable Sections to remove Uncategorized

Your team might not even use section values and you don’t care for my paperwork filing metaphors. Ultimately you still have the same need: removing Uncategorized from your Dashboard. We have this covered too. If you’re an Admin, then go to your 👤 Account settings > Preferences and then de-select the Sections aspect as seen below.

Additional Resources

If you’ve read the above and would still like help getting rid of Uncategorized values, then please contact support@parsely.com for investigation.