Herself's Webtools

There has been much debate recently among bloggers who blog about blogging about whether to use full or partial posts on your front page. As you may have noticed many bloggers are putting the blog on page two and using more a portal type front page to the website. This allows you to show your visitors more posts. The hope is that you get more page views. Good posts that are old can resurface to the front of your website. It also makes it easier for visitors to find things of interest.

In your WordPress blog it is very easy to switch between partial and full posts. Edit your Main Index Template and just change the line from one to the other.

For full posts use:

<?php the_content(‘Read the rest of this entry . . .’); ?>

For excerpt use:

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

The Debate:
Full posts vs partial posts, on the homepage
Full posts or excerpts?
Increase your Alexa rank with post excerpts
Post excerpts on the homepage?
Read more links or full posts?

Cool Themes of this sort:
Jello wala mello
Revolution Magazine
Digs’em WordPress Theme

Here is a very simple demonstration using the WordPress Classic Theme, you should be able to look at the changes I made to the style.css and index.php page and alter your own favorite theme to this format.

Download Magazine Style Classic WP Theme

I received a request for this on the ArchivesByCategory plugin page. Unfortunately there isn’t a plugin I can write that will paginate the archives one category to a page for you. But it is not too difficult to do with this plugin.

The plugin takes one category number from you and creates a link list of all the posts in that category.

You must create a separate archive page for each category. Since every template is different it is hard to give really detailed directions but I’ll try.In your theme find your archives.php page. Make a copy one for each category. archives1.php, archives2.php etc.

In archives1.php change

Template Name:ArchivestoTemplate Name: Archives 1change<h2>Archives</h2>to<h2>Category 1′s name</h2>Change<?php wp_list_categories(); ?>to<?php echo archive_of_posts(1); ?>

Now you have to do this for each archive page you want, one per category. The above example is for your first category.  For your next category replace the 1s with 2s.Lastly go to your wp-admin->write->page section. Then go to the Page Template drop down menu. You will see an entry for each archive page you made. Create one new page for each template archive entry. Give the page a title ‘Archives for Category 1′ or what ever you wish to call it. Nothing else. The template will fill in the page for you.

Both the plugin and the default WP theme that have been altered are included in the file below. That way you can see what I have done. Do not upload the default theme to your WP site. Just upload the plugin.

The theme is just to make it easier for you to see what I have done.Archives example and plugin

I’ve done this on two of my blogs so far, Herself’s Houston Garden, and Herself’s House Plants. It is much cleaner and a much nicer way of sorting your archives. I hope to have all my blogs updated to this method in the next week or two.

4/2/10 See also How to lists posts by category in WordPress; for a newer, easier way to do this.