I messed up - All Category Posts on Main Page

[rickghouse]

This is my first WordPress blog, so sorry for the newby question. I don't know if I did something wrong in WordPress or Socrates.

I want my home page to go to the first category that I posted on (not displaying other categories unless another category is clicked in the sidebar, and that's the way it was in the beginning. But all of a sudden something changed. My home page is All the posts in All the categories!

I've tried making my main post the parent of the other post categories, with no effect.

Here are my settings:

Socrates > Navigation > Your Categories: All my categories are displayed, but if I click on my main one, I go to my home page with All my categories on one page.

Settings > Permalinks > Custom Structure > /%category%/%postname%/

Settings > Writing > Default Post Category > An Effective and Inexpensive Cure
That's the name of my main category, but it is not defaulting to it. I can only get to it by clicking on it's category.

I want my visitors to go to my main page, with my main category only, then have the option of clicking on another category.

Help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks very much,

Rick.

[Dan Nickerson]

Rick,

Always include a URL so we can look at your site.

I would just use: /%postname%/ for your permalinks

If you set to show just a category it should work that way.. if you have wp super cache running it could cause an issue.

Can you share your link and confirm you don't have Wp super cache running?

[rickghouse]

Sorry, the url is:

http://www.livercancercurenow.com/

I don't have wp super cache.

Thanks for your help!

Rick.

[lynnth]

Rick,

How many categories do you have. I only see one category when I look at the page with two posts under it.

[Dan Nickerson]

You've got 1 main category and 2 sub categories.

It's working properly right now because it's displaying the posts in the category you mention.

If you want to test it quickly, create a category called "Test"

Then publish a post called "Test" in the "Test Category"

Then view main page. If that test post doesn't display it's working right.

[rickghouse]

The sub categories was just an idea I tried to see if it would fix the problem, and it didn't. So I put it back to just categories.

I took your advice and added more categories, for a total of 5 now. The categories are working perfectly. Each one is just my post and an opportunity to comment.

My main page (http://www.livercancercurenow.com/) has my main post at the top (sticky). But following it are all my other categories. I would like it to look like this page: http://www.livercancercurenow.com/ca...xpensive-cure/ with no other categories ... just my post and comments.

Thanks again for helping a newbie!

Rick.

[compusol]

Rick, you could try a plugin called 'Sticky Front Page Categories and Tags' - just search it when you go to Add New Plugins.

It sounds like this could be the simple way to achieve what you are after.

The default category choice in settings only preselects that category when you write a new post, not when you view the site.

Hope this helps

Phil

[rickghouse]

I would like to get a better understanding. I pulled this url from the "Show Off Your Socrates Sites" post: http://ighosthunt.com/

When you scroll down, you don't see all his categories stacked on the same page. You need to click on another category to get to it. That's what I want.

When you go to my site (http://www.livercancercurenow.com/) you do see all my categories stacked on the same page.

Did I mess up when I put my site together? Or would ighosthunt.com be using the 'Sticky Front Page Categories and Tags' plugin to achieve this?

If I messed up and need a plugin to fix it, I would rather disassemble the site and start fresh!

Thanks very much,

Rick.

[lynnth]

Rick,

One way to do what is on that site is to go to the WordPress Settings / Reading page and select A Static Page, then select a page to be displayed. That site also has the categories widget dragged to the sidebar to give the list for selection. I have a similar setup on my blog LynnTHarrison.com

You definitely don't need to start over. If you want the content to be unique to the front page, copy what you have in that post, paste it to a new page (maybe named something like home), set that as the static page and delete the original post.

[compusol]

It's not a case of having messed up, maybe more a slight misunderstanding of how Wordpress works.

The theme controls the overall appearance of a site, and Socrates does this so well...

Plug ins control how a lot of the information is displayed on the various pages.

So there is no need to disassemble your site to get the desired result, you are almost there.

Here is one of my sites that I have modified to show you what I mean:

http://articlesite.net/

This site is a general article site with a load of categories, normally all mixed up on the front page depending on posting date.

I have simply installed the 'Sticky Front Page Categories and Tags' plugin and told it that I wanted only the Diabetes category to show on the front page, which it does.

Is this what you are trying to achieve?

If so simply use the 'Sticky Front Page Categories and Tags' plugin which looks like a very easy way to achieve this.

Phil

p.s. It looks like ighosthunt.com is simply selecting a post or page to be a sticky, doesn't work for categories