Create a custom "category" page layout in wordpress (conversion boost?)

xplosiv · Jun 23, 2017

Hey guys

I have been looking into boosting up conversions on one of my sites, I think that categories and breadcrumb navigation could solve a lot of issues for my readers (finding content - not complex, but some people get confused easily).

However, the main issue I'm having is that the category pages looks exactly the same as my homepage (just with the posts from that specific category, which has a large image on the left and then an excerpt of 400 characters... this is way too much because then people have to scroll a while to get what they want.

I would like to know what I can do in these cases to create a custom excerpt - possibly using the featured image, the title of the post, and a very short excerpt. That way, all the posts in any specific category can be within a reasonable scrolling distance, especially on mobile.

I've seen a few plugins and articles, but they haven't been updated for some time as far as I've searched.

If you've got suggestions please let me know.

Cheers

Valkurm · Jun 23, 2017

I use different template for most of my categories, and display everything I want when I want.
It's a good way to add content, such as a buying guide for example, or your recommanded products.
You just have to rename your template category-yourcategory.php in order to apply it to a specific category.

lancis · Jun 23, 2017

Every category has Description field, try writing something there. Chances are that your theme will display that description before the posts.

jackalope · Jun 23, 2017

I've found most templates ship without any sort of category customization, but if you make your own theme or you are making a child theme you can just create a custom template page for all categories called category.php, or if you're really getting in there, you can make category-categoryname.php (like category-tutorials.php, and category-news.php, etc.) for each category you use. You can copy your current index page code onto the new template, and then change things like the image size or the excerpt length. Depending on how the theme was built that might be just changing the php, or it might require modifying functions.php and/or the css file(s).

If your category page wouldn't often need updating you can create a normal page specific to each category, then use a snippet in the functions file to redirect clicks to the category link onto the page you make. More work, but also more ability to micromanage how things are displayed. I was able to find some promising options by googling 'wordpress make a page override the category page' (I can't post links yet, sorry).

I build all of my wordpress themes from scratch so I don't know about any plugins that would be good, but someone else here probably does!

xplosiv · Jun 23, 2017

Thanks for the replies - this is very helpful and points me in the direction of what I should do. However, I am using genesis with a child theme, and tbh most programming stuff goes over my head, especially nitpicky bits of PHP and css. I may just have to pay someone to do this, but I will look into quicker solutions as they come.

It's a bit strange that WP still hasn't got customization for these types of things after all these years, but they continue to screw with the editor which was already working fine for the last few years and make it more irritating with every update. Like the annoying "quick" link search thing, removing underline, no automatic spacing between bulletpoints (gotta do it manually now FFS).

But I digress -- the site probably gets a post once every few weeks, but I would like an automated solution because I'm bound to miss stuff here and there lol.

jackalope said:
I've found most templates ship without any sort of category customization, but if you make your own theme or you are making a child theme you can just create a custom template page for all categories called category.php, or if you're really getting in there, you can make category-categoryname.php (like category-tutorials.php, and category-news.php, etc.) for each category you use. You can copy your current index page code onto the new template, and then change things like the image size or the excerpt length. Depending on how the theme was built that might be just changing the php, or it might require modifying functions.php and/or the css file(s).

If your category page wouldn't often need updating you can create a normal page specific to each category, then use a snippet in the functions file to redirect clicks to the category link onto the page you make. More work, but also more ability to micromanage how things are displayed. I was able to find some promising options by googling 'wordpress make a page override the category page' (I can't post links yet, sorry).

I build all of my wordpress themes from scratch so I don't know about any plugins that would be good, but someone else here probably does!

Create a custom "category" page layout in wordpress (conversion boost?)

xplosiv

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Valkurm

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lancis

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jackalope

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xplosiv

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