Wordpress categories can be defined as either numbers or names. Due to the ease of using numbers against names (A number is never confusing, its either one or another, where as one category may be named “dog” and another “my dogs”- this may become confusing.) on all of our themes we use Category numbers as a way of defining a category.

Finding the category number is easy- if you know where to look- so we will go through that now.

Firstly log into your Wordpress admin section. Navigate to the Categories page (/wp-admin/categories.php)

There are two quick ways of finding the category number, you can either:

Hover your mouse over the category name, and in the status bar at the bottom of your browser (Mine is Safari, but works on others) you should see the number of the category revealed. As you can see in the image below, its Category 48 I have the mouse hovering over.

Or you can click on the category name which takes you through to that specific category page in the admin area.In the address bar at the top of your browser you can see the category number is displayed at the end of the URL as shown in the image below, again were looking at Category 48.

This information can then be used wherever you need it, be that building a loop or controlling a theme.

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