WordPress How To: Latest Posts by Category Archive

One technique that is most common with WordPress magazine or news style themes is the display of an archive of the latest posts by category, as simple titles or with post excerpts. This is useful for the previously mentioned theme styles, but not only. It can be used to set up custom blog homepages, 404 pages, landing pages or even a special archive page.

This tutorial will help you build a ‘Latest Posts by Category Archive‘ in a very easy way. The widths in the CSS styling presented below have been calculated based on the default WordPress theme, assuming that is the most common theme available to anyone.

If you are looking for a plugin to generate such an archive, please check out: WP Plugin: Latest Posts by Category Archive.

Setting up the page template

Open up you favorite code editor and create a blank document. Save the document as ‘category-archive.php’ (or any other name you’d prefer) in the default WordPress theme directory (wp-content/themes/default).

The first step is to asign our new template a name and a page-like structure, so based on the default theme’s page template, the code you should paste in your new document is:

< ?php
/*
Template Name: Category Archive
*/
?>

< ?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

	< ?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
	<h2>< ?php the_title(); ?></h2>
		<div class="entry">
			< ?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page &raquo;'); ?>

			< ?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => '<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', 'after' => '</p>', 'next_or_number' => 'number')); ?>

		</div>
	</div>
	< ?php endwhile; endif; ?>

	<!-- Category Archive Start -->
	<!-- Category Archive End -->

</div>

< ?php get_sidebar(); ?>

< ?php get_footer(); ?>

The template above will make sure to display the page name you set up, and also, any additional content you might want to add before the archive, from you WordPress page editor. We will be adding our ‘latest posts by category’ code between the ‘Category Archive Start’ and ‘Category Archive End’ comments.
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10 Must-See Videos on WordPress.TV

As some of you might already know, back on January 17th, the folks at Automattic have launched WordPress.TV, a website they plan on turning into “Your Visual Resource for All Things WordPress”.

This is a definitely a great project that will undoubtedly become a WordPress resource hot spot. On what do I base my belief? On the amazing community of people around this extraordinary blogging (and not only) platform that is WordPress.

It’s enough to check out their support forums and see the kind of involvement that people show, how willing they are to help, solve problems and answer questions. So yes, I think that the WordPress TV will be a success.

The reasons behind this launch are simple. The WordPress community needs a place where video information (news, tutorials and so on) finds its way to people, after passing through a certain quality filter, where it will be kept up to date with ad/spam free.

By the looks of it, after only one week of existence, the community response is amazing.

So, in case you’ve missed the launch (but not only for this reason), in this post I’m going to guide you to 10 must-see videos on WordPress.TV.
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How to Add Your Logo to Simple Balance

By popular demand, I decided to publish a short tutorial on how to add your own logo to the Simple Balance WordPress theme.

So, in order to achieve this we’ll walk through the following steps:

1. The logo image guidelines and instructions;
2. Files to update;
3. Code explanation.

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Feedsessive – Free, Simple RSS Icon Pack

It’s time for a new freebie release! Here is Feedsessive, a free, simple and elegant RSS icon pack for you to use however you wish, in either personal or professional projects, with no restriction.

These days I’ve been working on a new project and I needed an RSS icon that is simple and elegant, and after designing one to use in my project, I decided to create a few variations and release them as a pack for those who might need it.

Feedsessive features 50 free RSS icons, split into 2 two design styles (basic and outlined), each with 25 color variation.

All the RSS icons are available in 3 formats:

• EPS (vector) format
• PDF format
• Transparent PNG format at 300dpi

* Packed size: 2.22 Mb
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The Blog Post Footer Design Manifesto

It’s a proven fact that a blog post’s footer is a “pause zone”. That’s why, people encourage you to place ads there, because you have more chances of catching the eye of your readers.

But, if it is a good place to place ads, why not take it one step further. Sure, some bloggers placed links to social media websites or to related blog posts in that are, but not giving it its deserved design attention minimizes its impact on readers.

Why not treat that area as a separate element of your blog’s structure? Why not take advantage of any of its effects:

• Encourage further reading;
• Promote featured content;
• Traffic growth;
• Bounce rate reduction;
• Social media exposure;
• Encourage subscription and many more.

As a reader of Blogsessive you must have noticed each post’s footer, and from my experience as Blogsessive’s webmaster, I can confirm that the results are amazing.
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