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archives page organized by category

  1. davidcarthage
    Member

    I'd like for my readers to be able to browse my posts by category. I know they can do that through a category widget, but that seems only to be available on the sidebar. I'd like to create an archives page organized by category. It seems such an obvious feature that I assumed it would be easy, but I can't find any way to do it (shortly of manually adding a link to a category list each time I publish a new post).

    Just to be clear, I don't want a page for each category. Rather, I'm hoping to create a single archives page that lists all my categories. Under each category, there would be a list of posts that fit that category.

    Seems like it's got to be possible. Does anyone know how?

    The blog I need help with is pintsofhistory.com.

  2. thesacredpath
    Staff

    See this post by Panos talking about which themes have an archives template and how it works.

    Other than that, we have the archives shortcode, but it does not sort by category.

  3. davidcarthage
    Member

    Thesacredpath, I hope you're still getting notices on this thread. It sounds like a categories archive isn't an option based on the systems already available, but I'd really like one. (My site is less about daily posts and more about finding what you need.) I assume it wouldn't be too hard to create an archive-by-category page. Do you have any idea who I should contact about that and what it should cost?

    Thanks again.

    /David

  4. timethief
    Member

    I don't comprehend the problem. When we publish a post it automatically appears on the running page for blog posts, an on the Categories pages assigned to the posts, and in the Archives. All entries are chronologically arranged. Click any category links and you will locate every post every assigned to it.

    If you would like to create a Categories based site index please see the entry I just linked to.

  5. thesacredpath
    Staff

    Well, you cannot create or use custom page types here at wordpress.com. This would require major hacking and the addition of some PHP scripting and PHP files and we cannot do that here.

    The only solution here would be to create a page and do it by hand and then manually update it each time you did a post.

    There are plugins that will do this for self-hosted sites so if this is a must, you will have to self-host a site using the software from wordpress.ORG on a third-party hosting service such as godaddy, bluehost, etc.

  6. davidcarthage
    Member

    Thanks.

    Timethief, it looks like the link you provided gives me a way to create category pages manually. In other words, the pages won't automatically list all posts in a category, so I need to manually update the categories page every time I add a new post. Is that right?

    This seems such a simple thing; I can't understand why it's so hard. It's possible to create an archive page broken down by date: all posts, last 12 months, etc. Isn't there some way to create one broken down by category, which doesn't require manual updates?

    /David

  7. timethief
    Member

    so I need to manually update the categories page every time I add a new post. Is that right?

    Yes. You will have to manually update it.

    Isn't there some way to create one broken down by category, which doesn't require manual updates?

    No there isn't and IMO there's no need for one either. You and any of your visitors can can also click any Category link in your blog and locate every post assigned to that Category on its own Category page displayed in reverse chronological order.

  8. thesacredpath
    Staff

    The archive shortcode works off the existing archives related functions which are all associated with dates. Adding category related sort capabilities is a bit of work.

    The other way they could do it would be to create a special page template, but this would require hacking of all 140 + themes here. Again, a good bit of work since each theme change would have to be tested in all browser and all supported browser versions to make sure that none of them blew up.

    "Simple" and "software" are not close friends the majority of the time.

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