Can you apply different themes to categories?

  • I have several WP installation for each subject of review, film blah blah.

    What I’m thinking about is having one installation with each topic divided by the sub-categories – I hate doing it this way, but I think it will be the easiest to manage.

    So, for each parent category I would like to apply a different theme or style – is this possible? So that clicking on a post for a category or child of the parent would create a different style to another parent/child category? I would be applying about 5. If so any guidance as to how?

    Would welcome advice on this.

    Thanks in advance

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Thread Starter jinsan

    (@jinsan)

    anyone?

    so far, I’m still trying to get some PHP writing help on this topic. But, two threads that have been started may help you find the answer:

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic.php?id=24988

    and this one:
    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic.php?id=20048

    As I said, they’re both a good start. My problem is that Im new to PHP and don’t exactly know how to ‘build’ this into my current pages. If you can find that out, please let me know. ??

    Good luck!

    Thread Starter jinsan

    (@jinsan)

    Nice to have a good start and there are things I can gather from it, but it would be nice to have some sort of solution otherwise I may as well stick with 5 installations….oh well

    Thread Starter jinsan

    (@jinsan)

    Well I’ve been trying without much luck it seems a helluva lot of work to get it working to be honest, so I wouldn’t bother until maybe a later version that manages it better. YOu either have use seperate installations and set a theme or css for each one, or play with it until you’re depressed.

    Check out this discussion: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic.php?id=22567 . You don’t need a bazillion WordPress installations, though you should check with the soon-to-be-released multi-blog version of WordPress (search google, not sure where that info is right now). You can customize your categories, and even your single posts. And yes, it is work, but once you figure it out, how wonderful that sense of accomplishment is.

    I don’t know why you want to have all these different themes and CSS for each subcategory, but I do know that you can set up a random image that will change every time your pages are viewed, or do other things to vary the look and feel from section to section.

    If you were more specific with how you want to do this, we’d be able to help you more. Here are a few other discussions you should look at:

    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic.php?id=24943
    https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic.php?id=3357

    Thread Starter jinsan

    (@jinsan)

    Subcategories was an off the cuff thought rather than a want, I tend to try to work things out as I type (call it cheap therapy). I’ll take a look at those threads you suggest. As for why I want different themes and colours?

    I am trying to build a review site – I haven’t watched a film, read a book, played a game or even listened to a new album because if I do I start writing about it and if I do I need somewhere to post it. So with a review site, which I might persuade others to contribute to, I’d like a seperate css or theme. I think, in order to keep the feel of identity, I would prefer simply to change the colours of the CSS, changed the headers and change any icon images to another CSS rather than new templates etc.

    Music would be one style, games would be another, film and books another. On top of this, there would be a main page which would pull the latest posts from each of the parent categories – ignore the child categories, as I will not be using them.

    I worked out that if I could get a different style for each category, I only need a single installation, because the main front page should be able to pull the recent posts for each category – I assume that is. I also assume by taking the archive permalink for a category and using that as an actual link to the page, it would display the latest posts from that category.

    There’s lots I need to do, I just need quite a bit of help getting it done. I tried to change theme to style in the title as it seemed the core aim, but couldn’t do it. I’ll give those links a go, though I suspect I may have already tried some of them As for the Multi-User WP, the problem is…where’s the support? It’s a seperate entity really, and I prefer a WP jobbie from WP

    The last link I gave you talks about someone who wants to design each category based upon a specific film they are “reviewing” and talking about. Therefore, each category must “look” like the film they are talking about. You’ll find some helpful information there.

    The support for the Multi-Blog WordPress is coming, when there is a Multi-Blog WordPress. Not everything can happen overnight, you know. The developers are doing the best they can.

    There are a lot of people who’ve figured out how to change the look of things based upon the category. I’m not one of them, though I thought about it. I go for simple, letting the content tell my story rather than the “look” tell the story. I love CSS and there are a lot of things you can do with IF/ELSE php coding that can let you stylize things differently, so the answer it out there. It just takes some work to figure it out because you want to do something outside of the norm.

    Ah, the struggles we rule breakers have to endure!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • The topic ‘Can you apply different themes to categories?’ is closed to new replies.