Hey everyone,
How do you guys go about or can anyone help me with my problems with using the themes as a news website. I have tried a couple if different ways but can’t find one that makes sense or that I like.
First way I tried was having all the categories set up and using pages for each category. So I would have a page for sport music etc…. The problem with this is when someone who would find a post on let’s say google search it would just bring them to the post and not the page it’s in.
Then I tried using the categories itself. Only problem with this is that there is little customisation for just the category pages.
So I would like to ask you, or if you can any of you help is… How to you go about making your news website? Do you use a plugin or ..?
Um…. you might want to read up on how to use WordPress first from the many tutorials online. Then review the docs for the theme, then explore using the features on each category page.
Typically you have categories for news such as
* Technology
* Entertainment
* Music
* Sports
then when you do a post, the news post gets put into a category related to that news content, like “Sports.”
For each category page, you can select a module layout, such as a big photo, and then colors, and a description about that category. The category page auto-updates with your latest items, and you can make it so the “featured” post is highlighted on each category page.
If you want to create a complete home page like layout for each category, you might have to do some custom programming. This is typically done in WordPress by creating a new category template based on the category number.
That might not be the best answer, but perhaps it will get the juices flowing 🙂
Appreciate the reply Chris!
I do have a good knowledge of wordpress and have used it for many blogs. For a news website im just a little uneducated. I see how your explaining it by putting each post into a category lets say ‘Windows 8.1 Review’ in a category called ‘Tech’.
I just dont like the little customization there is though for a category page. What I would like to have is a featured slider at the top. Then lets say a module of latest news from that category and then maybe a section ‘Other News’ below that. Atm I cant see anyway of doing that unless you make a page and add modules…
Any feedback is welcome!
Obviously any customization not found in the online demos for the theme, might require hiring a custom programmer, or building out a custom category template.
But try this:
1) create category called “Tech”
2) in theme panel, go to “categories”
3) click on the accordion for “Tech” and look at the options (assuming you have not already); since you can add a slider, custom sidebar (you have to create one first), custom background color or image (like a techy background for tech, sporty for sports), and the layout of the story display.
I “think” you can use the full width sidebar widget option to create a custom category sidebar (e.g., sidbartech), and then put a full width custom element into that area. I’ve not yet tried that.
I am actually contemplating doing some things like this myself, which is why I thought to reply. Nice thing is you can play with it and not break anything 🙂
I get ya, if it’s not in the theme panel you have to make it 😛 Thanks for the help anyway I like the idea of the sidebar!
