Can Category-based posts appear on static pages?

  • Hello all,
    I’m building a site for a monthly print magazine with 8 different columns (Sports, Fashion, Nightlife, etc), each with its own writer and static page. I’d like to have each page display the posts assigned to that category. For example, the sports page would display the posts written by the Sports writer, which he assigned to the Sports category only, while the Dining page would only display the Dining posts, etc. The theme I am using is a great theme, but does not offer this option natively. Can anyone offer code or point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.

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  • possibly with page templates:
    https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Pages#Page_Templates

    Thread Starter blindscientist

    (@blindscientist)

    Thank you so much alchymyth. After reading that document fully (several times!), what I did was the following:

    • Created a separate category for each writer’s column (Sports, Fashion, etc)
    • created a custom page template for each static page,pertaining to that column (ex: dining.php for the Dining column)

    My understanding is that each time a writer creates a post for his/her column, they simply select the proper template from the drop-down which corresponds to their column.

    My problem is that I can’t find/don’t know the code to include in each custom template. (I know HTML and CSS, but learning PHP via this kind of crash course). I’m hoping for something that displays posts only from a specified category, and only the last “X” number of posts. If that code was actually in the link you sent, would you (or someone else) be kind enough to point out exactly which code? I’ve tried cutting/pasting various snippets into the document with no luck. Thanks again in advance.

    Do you need anything special on the “Column” pages? Like custom author bios or layout?

    If not, have you considered treating each Column as a Category?

    Basically, set each Column as a WordPress Category. Then whenever someone wants to post to that Column they just need to post to that category. This way you’re not limiting each column to just one author. If you need to further categorize the posts, you can always create sub-categories or use tags.

    Then just use the default category pages in your theme as the Column pages. And, then add the category pages to you menus.

    Doing it this way mean you are losing some customizations capabilities but maybe it’s good enough? Depending on your theme, you may need to make minor tweaks to change “category” to some other label that makes more sense?

    This is not the best way or full featured way to do it but it’s worth considering, especially if your on a budget or have limited dev skills/resources.

    Here’s an example of a site that does the “Columns” by category strategy.

    https://www.magazines.com/blog/

    Thread Starter blindscientist

    (@blindscientist)

    Hello Ming Sheu,
    THANK YOU so much. This is not only what I was trying to do, but also trying to explain here. It appears I was over-complicating things. I simply switched the menus from pagers to categories and that was what I needed. Thanks again to all who offered support. nice to know that this is here. Cheers!

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