Two Blog Pages for One WordPress Site – (no help from previous posts)

Well, it’s tricky to know what you mean, but splitting them up by category is actually probably the easiest way to do it. You simply define two extra categories blogpage1 and blogpage 2 and assign posts to them.

Then one blog page shows only blogpage1 posts and the other blog page shows only blogpage2 posts.

Each post will therefore have at least two categories e.g. if your site is about fruit then five random posts might have these categories:

strawberries
blogpage1

lemons
blogpage2

grapes
blogpage1

oranges
blogpage1

pears
blogpage2

See that is the response people kept giving on other posts like this, and it just doesn’t make sense to me.

I always assign blog posts to categories, and I understand that you are saying to create specific categories that would refer to the two different blogs.

But right now all of the entries still show up on the one blog page I have, right, they only filter if you click a category after you have already entered the blog page and seen all of them listed. How would I use category to keep all of the posts from showing up automatically on both pages? Is there a step I’m missing, somewhere to tell the entries to not show up? I just don’t get it.

See that is the response people kept giving on other posts like this

Because it’s the most practical solution. You cannot have 2 main post (Blog) pages in a single install.

You COULD turn your site into a MultiSite and have two totally separate blogs, OR use Custom Post Types (which would have their own … index page for the CPTs).

You cannot have 2 main post (Blog) pages in a single install.

But I can, that’s what’s confusing me. If I couldn’t then I wouldn’t be able to even create a second page with ‘Blog Page’ as the template.

What I am hearing then is no. I can have two identical blogs that force people to click the category they want to get to the correct blog, but I can’t have what I want.

So…it would work if I had a place to put those categories to click, because then it would route them correctly, but if I have both blogs listed in my header to click they would both first go to a page showing all posts.

If only there was a way to have the categories BE in the header with the links for the other pages, as if the categories were pages, then it would work the way I want.

But I can,

Sorry – but you can’t. There is only one main posts page as defined in Settings->Reading. You can have as many Pages called Blog as you like but only 1 of them can be the main posts page.

Perhaps you could look a creating 2 page-of-posts Pages instead?

Exactly what I said, I know I can’t have two separate blogs, I can however have as many mirrored pages of that same blog, I just don’t want that.

The other suggestion is exactly what I was asking for though, the ability to display the blog posts from my blog in two separate areas. I could just do that twice for my two different categories, have those pages display in the header and then not have my actual blog display and it would work the way I want, I think.

The problem is I don’t trust myself to touch any code, so this will have to be tabled anyway. Thanks!

You do realise that you can exclude and include specific categories? I’m a bit confused about what you want but you can be very specific about what you have on any blog page.

But you do have to touch the code a little bit – you would probably have a line a bit like this before the loop:

<?php query_posts('showposts=10&cat=71&order=ASC'); ?>

That would show only posts from the category with an ID of 71

On your other blog page, same line, but different number representing a different category ID

So I CAN tell the blog to NOT show certain categories? That was my question. If I can have the blog page, and then a mirror of the blog page, and just tell both to only display certain categories, that solves the problem. Thank you!

This code is a little less invasive, so I think I can work with that.

I just need to know where to put the code. Not sure what you mean by “before the loop”? And where do I find the category ID #s?

The loop often goes something like this;

<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

Click on a category from within admin and the very last bit of the url will be a number. That’s the ID – not ideal, a peculiar way to find it.

Thank you!

I’m going to try this out, and have the categories set, but I need to change that code in the page_blog.php correct? I can see where it is in that code to make the change, but what about when I create the mirror blog, another page with the blog on it? Will another php page create itself for me to give it different instructions? How do I tell one page one thing and another something else so that the two blog pages display the two different categories?

In all honesty I never fully understood your original question ?? Furthermore you talk about entries on a page (using Blog Page as a template) – a Page in WP usually means one post.

So all in all I’m confused. If you copy and paste the file that you mean here https://pastebin.com/ it might make it easier to understand?

I will try to explain as I understand it.

Okay…my blog PAGE (the page the blog sits on) has several ENTRIES/POSTS on it that link to their own PAGES with only that ENTRY/POST displayed, that’s what you’re saying, and I get that.

I only want certain ENTRIES to show up on the main blog PAGE, and other ENTRIES to show up on another blog PAGE, that would otherwise be identical to the main blog. I have split all of my ENTRIES into two CATEGORIES. Since the main blog itself is a PAGE, it has a ‘page_blog.php’ thing that I can enter the code on to tell the main blog PAGE to only include ENTRIES fitting a certain CATEGORY. If I make another blog PAGE, will that provide me with another ‘page_blog.php’ like thing where I can enter that same code telling it to only display the other CATEGORY.

So in the end I would have two PAGES listed as blogs, one would show only ENTRIES from one CATEGORY and the other would only show ENTRIES from another category. Within both blog main pages they would still link normally to their respective entry pages, I just want it split.

Does that make any sense?

Not really ??

Have you got a link to your site?