The posting of this edited tutorial is to indicate that, at last, categories are alive and functional on this blog. First, the tutorial, then a few comments:

SO: You have a blog (or more than one) on Blogger, and you want to include Categories. Blogger.com does not support categories as one of its features currently, but it is certainly possible to include categories on your blog. This tutorial will show you how. (This tutorial is for Del.icio.us; I plan to work on categories using Technorati as well when time permits, with a similar tutorial to follow.) Grateful acknowledgement is extended to TruckSpy/RedRyder52 for his patient assistance in the Blogger Forum with this topic.

Gather your tools:
--a blog (or several)...

--an account on De.licio.us -- Delicious is a social bookmarking or 'tagging' service. Registration is free.

--a tagger, such as the one found here, that uses Firefox's GreaseMonkey extension that will make it easy to insert tags into your posts. There are several of these on the internet. Choose the one you like best.

BE SURE to edit the bookmarklet's properties so that the De.licio.us link points to your De.licio.us page and your taglist, and not those of whoever wrote or edited the script for the bookmarklet. You want your tags in your posts to link properly, or you will end up with someone else's tags altogether, which is not the ultimate goal.

When you install the bookmarklet, there will be a window below your post edit window where you will enter your tags, separated by spaces, then click "add tags", and the tags will appear at the last cursor position in the edit window.

The Process: Once you have your Blogger.com blog, your De.licio.us account and the bookmarklet set up, you are ready to proceed. There are four basic steps to follow; they are listed here, with detailed explanations following the complete list:

Step 1. Make sure that each of your blog's posts are tagged.
Step 2. Add each of your posts to De.licio.us
Step 3. Add the code for the Categories drop-down menu to your blog template
Step 4. build your categories list in your template

Details:

Step 1. If your blog is new, it will be easy to just add your tags as you write each post. If, however, your blog has been around for a while, you will likely have some posts that do not have tags added. For those, you will need to spend some time entering your tags manually, using the bookmarklet of your choice.

Step 2. (a) Now that all of your individual posts have been tagged, you will need to add the individual posts to De.licio.us. There are two ways to access the permalinks for your posts. One way is to open each individual post on your blog, and click the timestamp. This will take you to the permalink page. An easier way to access the permalinks is to open the Blogger Dashboard, and click the title of the blog you want to work on. This will take you to a page where your posts are listed by date and post-title. On the right, there will be a link that says "View." if you click "View", you will be taken to the permalink page for each post.

(b) When you get to the permalink page for your first post, copy the address for the post from your location bar, and use a bookmarklet (you can obtain one called "remember this page" from De.licio.us--which, by the way is included in the De.licio.us toolbar available as an extension for Firefox) to add each of the post pages to De.licious. If your added tags do not appear on the De.licio.us page as you add the permalink pages, you can always insert tags or change, edit, delete or merge them on De.licio.us. (See De.licio.us About for more information). Continue adding the permalinks for each of your blog posts in turn, until they are all listed on De.licio.us. (The individual post pages will appear as hyperlinks.)

3. The dropdown list for the delicious categories is just a normal dropdown linked to YOUR delicious tags. You can obtain the code from this page in Blogger Forum.

4. Now you will need to build your categories menu list. You will do this in your blog's template, where you want the list to appear.

You have to build the menu putting each category in its own string; this is most easily done by selecting individual tags, in turn, from the list on De.licio.us for your account. Then, just copy the information in the location bar directly into your template. View the categories section source code in the left sidebar of my template to see ezamples of this. The can be repeated as often as needed to list all of your categories. If at some point in the future you add a new category...you have to come back and add it to the menu.

When you complete the tutorial, you will be set, with categories on your blog. Get into the routine of (a) tagging each new post before you publish your blog, and (b) using the De.licio.us bookmarklet to save each new post's permalink page to De.licio.us, and don't forget if you add a new category, you will need to manually add it to your template. Happy tagging, and happy posting!

Author's Comments: This was a fairly large project to undertake, in my experience. It is best done when you have ample time and relative quiet to enhance concentration, at least for me. If you're the type who thinks best with blasting heavy metal streaming from your speakers in quadraphonic stereo surround-sound...more power to you. I also had to pay careful attention to details to keep from getting "tangled up", but I did find that Firefox was a big help, because I could easily switch back and forth between tabs to see that every entry was posted, tags were copied, and worked correctly. I have edited this tutorial several times while working on this project, and I hope it is clear and helpful. If not....comment!