Category And Tag Archive Listing Pages

Some themes let you add a headline and introductory text to these listing pages. Brian Clark calls these pages cornerstone content pages, because they’re a great way to make a central hub for posts on a specific topic.

First watch this Category And Tag Archive Listing Pages video
Then scroll to the bottom of the page and view the slides.

The industry Standard for WordPress Themes

We need a category to list our posts, so go to…

Posts > Categories.
Make a new category.

Hover your mouse over the category you just made. A pop up appears, click Edit.

You now see the Edit Category, page.
Scroll down this page to find Category Archive Settings.
Type a title for your category page in the Archive Headline section.
Type some text in to the Archive Intro Text box. You can add HTML and images in this box. It will appear at the top of your category listing page.
If you don’t want to have any headline or text above the post listing on your category page, leave both boxes empty.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the big blue Save (Update) button.

Now you have a category, you need to put some posts into this category.

Go to Posts > All Posts.
Hover over any post you want to put in this category. A pop up appears. Click Quick Edit.
A dialogue appears. In the categories section, choose the category you have just made.
Click the Update button.

Do this to place as many posts as you like in your new category.
WordPress has automatically made a category listing page for this new category.
We now need to add a link in the navigation menu that will open the category listing page.

In the Dashboard, go to…

Appearance > Menus.
Choose the menu you want to add this link to. Or make a new menu.
On the left hand side of your screen, you should see a dialogue with Pages, Links and Categories.
Click the Categories tab.
Click View All tab.
Select your new category.
Click the Add To Menu button.
Click the Save Menu button.

You now have a link in your menu that will open the category listing page.
You can make listing pages for tag archive pages too.
But you have to make the link manually.

Go to Posts > Tags.
If you’ve already made some tags, hover over any tag name, (or make a new tag).
A pop up appears.
Choose Edit, to add your headline and intro text for this tag archive page.
Choose View, to view the tag listing page.

When you view the tag listing page you can copy the URL from your browser.
To make a link to this tag listing page, go to…

Dashboard > Appearance > Menus.
Select the menu you want to edit.
In the Pages, Links, Categories section, choose Links.
Paste in your URL and type some text to display as the button or link.
Click add to menu.
Click Save Menu.

Now when you click the link to this tag archive page on your menu, you’ll see the blog style listing of all posts with this tag. Don’t forget to tag some posts 🙂

These slides show the process we went through in this Category And Tag Archive Listing Pages tutorial…