Blog as parent category instead of page?

I don’t think so, although i didn’t get what you want to do : )

i mean the structure you want to have in your menu.

> and show my latest posts at the blog category archive page instead

I’m not sure what part you don’t understand, but let me try to elaborate.

i mean the structure you want to have in your menu.

My menu structure would be the same regardless of whether I use a “posts page” or a “parent category” for the blog.

and show my latest posts at the blog category archive page instead

Was this the part you don’t understand?

You know how most WP blogs are set up, right? You usually show your latest posts either on:

• Your home page
• Or your “posts page”, if your home page is a static page

I don’t want to use either. I want to make a third option, where I assign the parent category “Blog” to all my posts, and you can view my latest posts by going to the archive page of the “Blog” category.

To the visitor it will look all the same, but the coding will be different.

I wanted to know whether problems like these might occur:

• Plugins won’t work because I don’t have a “posts page”
• Google won’t like my site, because it’s set up different from most WP blogs, and ranks my site lower / doesn’t show breadcrumbs in rich snippets / etc.

Or any other problems I might not think of.

So whatever page you set as your ‘blog’ page will show posts from all categories – in whatever order you choose, eg most recent first etc.
A site visitor, can then go to a sub-category section, eg:
Blog > WordPress,
Blog > WordCamps
Blog > Apples
Blog > Pears
With WordPress, WordCamps, Apples, Pears all being sub-categories?

There should be no issue at all with this setup regards to plugins or search engines.

Mark Smallman, your visualization is exactly right.

There should be no issue at all with this setup regards to plugins or search engines.

I was a little worried about this because of another discussion here. Here are a few quotes from the second post there:

The Blog Page gives out several indicators to social sites and Search Engines that it’s a Blog. […] In fact, WordPress requires a Blog page to be available. Failing to do so may cause bugs in some plugins and themes, and even within WordPress itself. […] The Blog page is a reserved item within WordPress. Many WordPress functions and queries are written around this item.

He recommends that I do create a Blog page, but give it a slug I won’t use, noindex it, and then use the parent category “Blog” page as the actual blog page.