12 replies to this topic

[attac]

It would have been really nice if one easily could create different templates for category pages, so that one could create special page layouts for some categories and have standard page layout for the rest. (Both for the category archive page and for posts in a certain category).

This would turn Wordpress into a full fledged CMS, which is what I need really. If one could control the layout with Pagelines drag-and-drop it would be awesome.

Have anyone done anything like this? Is there a guide or a thread in the forums on how to do it? I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask for it, but I'm not sure what terms to search for so instead I'm asking for your help finding the right threads.

(The best thing would be if someone made a plugin for Pagelines to do this, something which I'm quite sure it would be very popular.)

Just to clarify what I mean, if it is unclear, here's the case:

My website is for a non-profit political organisation, and we publish news about our issues. We would like to incorporate a "leaders blog" where she posts more blog-like posts (personal touch-things) on what she is doing, as well as a blog with contributions from our academic council. I want a different layout for these blog pages than from the regular news pages, to clearly separate them.

[catrina]

If you've already tried customizing the Category page using PageLines > Page Options, Drag & Drop, and custom CSS for further customization and you want to go beyond that, you may want to consider learning PHP for more specialized layouts. You can also hire a Pro to assist you since it's their expertise.

[attac]

I'm fine with modifying the Category page in Drag-and-drop, I'd like to have more than one template for Category-pages to modify. Hiring a Pro may be a way, but I was wondering if someone already did this so that I could do it myself.

[Rob]

I created custom category pages then applied Special Recent Posts to pull the posts by category. This bypasses the Category template, and provides total customization. The category pages are then linked by menu.

[attac]

Robs option is one way to do it, but as it requires all category pages to be linked trough the menu, and it only solves half the issue, it's not ideal. I was looking at this plugin:

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, which seems to do what I want.

As I gather from the documentation, I can use the Example page in Drag-and-drop to create a custom page template, then copy and rename that in my child theme. Is this correct?

If so, would there be any issues with using the above plugin to generate custom templates in the same way?

[James B]

I've heard of a couple of clients achieve this using the 'types and view's' plugins.

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check it out

[beardedavenger]

I also just so happen to release AnyLoop, a super powered post loop that you can use to display posts from multiple categories, tags, authors, and even post types. It was built to address your specific request of wanting to display different posts from different categories with different layouts on different pages.

Demo

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Store

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Awesome!
Nick

[attac]

James B / beardedavenger: Thanks for the tips, but it is unclear to me how either Wp-types or Anyloop solves this issue? Both seems to create new ways to use the loop and do a lot more than what I need. 

 

I don't want to create new post types or totally new views, I just want to apply templates to categories. None of the plugins I found works with Pagelines since Pagelines does a lot to the loop.

 

Could you eloborate on how to use either of the plugins to do what I want? Since I'm on a strict budget I can't spend money on plugins I won't use.

[James B]

Hi there, I've not actually used types and views myself. The client I was helping at the time was using it for a local authority site, she had pages appearing in the drag and drop as new templates, but even if you managed to set up a new category template I don't think it would add another category tab to the list in 'page options'. So you wouldn't be able to control any meta options for these new pages separately.

[attac]

Thanks James. 

 

Doesn't seem like the right solution for me then. 

 

BeardedAvenger?

[beardedavenger]

If you want the category page to have a different layout, you'll have to build the layout.

[mrtripper]

Hi everyone,

 

I have the same question and don't understand the last answer whe you say : "you have to do the layout"...does it mean we have to request help from a web specialist or agency. In which part of the code do we have to make the changes ?

Or do we have to understand ther's no way to get a page for the blog  and one or more special pages by category/ies ? In other terms is it impossible to have a menu made by widgets linked to special pages for each categories ?

 

thank you in advance for your contribution.

Attached Files

•  Boutons_categories.pdf   202.93K  0 downloads

[Martin Davies]

Hi Mrtripper 

 

Please could you create a new post with your questions? You can link to this post but this post was last answered in December. Feel free to cut and paste the information put in your question. 

 

 

The reason as to why we ask users to create a new topic even if the issues are similar, is that most of the time, our users will either ask another question or the issues end up not being similar.

 

Now if we didn't do this, when other PageLines users are using the search function for answers to their issues, the topic that they think holds the answer to their issue actually ends up not even being related.

 

You can find our FAQ and documentation here:

 

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