Organizing with categories
As your paste collection grows, categories become essential for keeping things organized and findable. PasteBase uses a free-form category system — there are no predefined options or rigid structures. You simply type a category name when creating or editing a paste, and it becomes available for filtering.
How categories work
Every paste can have a category assigned to it. Categories are just text labels — you type whatever makes sense for your workflow. There's no setup step, no configuration page, and no limit to how many categories you can use. If you type "Support emails" as the category for a paste, that category exists. If you use it on five more pastes, they're all grouped together.
Filtering by category
On your team's paste list, you can filter pastes by category to narrow down what's shown. This is especially useful when your team has dozens or hundreds of pastes across different topics. Instead of scrolling through everything, click on a category to see only the pastes that belong to it.
Category naming tips
Since categories are free-form, a little consistency goes a long way. Here are some practical suggestions:
- Be specific enough to be useful — "Customer onboarding" is better than "Emails" if you also have sales emails, support emails, and internal emails.
- Keep names short — One to three words usually works best. Long category names clutter the interface.
- Agree on names with your team — If you're working in a shared team, decide on category names together so everyone uses the same labels. "Support" and "Customer Support" split your pastes into two groups unnecessarily.
- Use a consistent format — Pick either title case ("Support Emails") or lowercase ("support emails") and stick with it.
Common category patterns
Here are some category schemes that work well in practice:
- By department — "Support", "Sales", "Engineering", "HR", "Marketing"
- By content type — "Email templates", "Code snippets", "Configs", "Documentation"
- By project — "Project Alpha", "Website redesign", "Q4 launch"
- By workflow — "Onboarding", "Troubleshooting", "Follow-ups", "Closing"
Changing categories
You can change a paste's category at any time by editing the paste. This makes it easy to reorganize as your needs evolve. If you decide that "Customer support" should just be "Support", update the category on each paste — there's no bulk rename feature, so it's worth getting your naming right early.