I wanted to continue to create long format blog posts on this WordPress site and gradually build out the categories covered. At the same time, I wanted to deliver content more often. The idea of documenting what I learn every day has been stewing in my head for awhile. I have had grand ideas, but then I decided to keep it simple to start with short bite-size blog posts. If I start to get into this and get good feedback from the readers, maybe this becomes something bigger like a podcast. This is becoming too long to be considered bite-size, so let’s dig into setting up a WordPress Category page.
WordPress Category Page – Research
To solve the problem with setting up a WordPress Category Page, I started with Google. I ended up on this page on this page on the WordPress Support Site on displaying one WordPress Category on a page. There is great stuff on this page and maybe I will circle back around and review this at a later date, but I wanted to keep setting up my WordPress Category Page simple. Then I remembered that I have used a plugin to do something like this before. On InstaParking.com, I was able to use a plugin to add the most recent posts with the category “Newsletter” in a widget on the home page. The Plugin is Recent Posts Widgets Extended by Satrya and here is their description:
This plugin will enable a custom, flexible and super advanced recent posts, you can display it via shortcode or widget. Allows you to display a list of the most recent posts with thumbnail, excerpt and post date, also you can display it from all or specific or multiple taxonomy, post type and much more!
WordPress Category Page – Setting Up
Here are the steps to get a WordPress Category page done in less than 10 minutes:
- Login into the WordPress admin and click on “Plugins” then “Add New”
- In the search box paste – Recent Posts Widgets Extended and click enter. Here is what the search result will look like and click “Install Now”
- After the plugin is installed there will be a screen with an option to “active the plugin”. Click the link to activate.
- Create a blog post or use an existing blog post and set the category. I started a new category called “Learn Something” when I created this article.
- Create a page that you are going to use as your WordPress Category page. My page is Learn Something New Every Day. Publish the page.
- Go to the widgets page Appearance -> Widgets. You can click on the Recent Posts Widgets Extended and set to show “Below the Content” in my case and a screen will pop-up to configure. For more on the configure options go to the plugin page here. Or, do what I do and just keep playing with the setting and see what they do…
- This is where another plugin that I use comes in handy called Widget Context. I use this widget to set the Recent Widgets Extended to only show on my WordPress Category page. And I can tell that I will need to do a post on this widget in the near future.
If you follow these steps, I want to see your WordPress Category page. Put a link to your page in the comments.