Help Creating list of categories on new Page

I should clear up my request. I’m not interested in the CSS wrapper of the news page site I listed, I just need the same type of format shown in the site to show up in wordpress page. Thought there might be a plugin for this – like there is for the static page?

Thanks again,
Doug

Basically want the the news.php site to be the first page in wordpress – but also want to keep the wordpress Home static page.

I doubt that will ever work. Either… or.

That does sound confusing. I would like to keep the static Home page as is on the wordpress site. Then I would like to add a page that will have a list of categories with 3 summary post limit for each category using the wide width and no sidebar. This new page will be linked to from our college site.

So basically I would like to create a new page that will use a template that allows what I have discribed above. Is this possible and or is there a plug-in that will work for this?

Thanks,
Doug

want the the news.php site to be the first page in wordpress
and
also want to keep the wordpress Home static page

For me this is the confusing: since the Home page is the “first page” – I don’t see how could you have another first page…

The home static page will be the homepage in wordpress.

The second page – category summary page that I wish to create will not be the main or first page. It will simply be a page and it will be accessed when someone clicks on the news link at faa.appstate.edu.

Does that help?

Doug

Sure. This makes sense, as far as the contradiction has been eliminated.
However, if we are talking about Pages (as in created by Write > Write Pages) we will run in difficulties: Pages are not meant to display multiple posts. (there are quite a lot of threads about failed attempts to do it…)
I wouldn’t say it’s impossible, but you’ll have to create a special template file with multiple Loops – or a non-WP file that is able to use the WP functions.

ok I’ll try. Basically I would like to use the same template as the monthly archive but make it shore the last 3 recent posts and use wide margin without the sidebar.

Doug

I would like to use the same template as the monthly archive

Well, you can use it as a starting point, but it will never do what you showed in your example without modifying the Loop (using multiple Loops).
As for the sidebar – with kubrick that’s always a nightmare: when it is used and when not it defined by if_statements (conditionals) in the header.php.
Good luck!

I’m still trying to get this to work.

I’ve followed some of the instructions and created a new template to select called arc-cont.php and was able to take the side bar out by modifying the header which I copied and pasted into arc-cont.php. Then I copied some code out of archive.php and pasted it into the file. It displays everything but the posts. So, how do I get the loop part to work? It seems like it just works for files called single.php and archive.php – how do I get arc-cont.php to get into the loop? Can’t I simply add a loop statement in the file or do I have to change a template somewhere else outside of Themes? I’m sure this can be done – they talk about category-6.php etc. in the templates area so do I have to name the file a specific title to be in the loop?

Thanks,
Doug