Blog / Portfolio hybrid site

  • Dear WP users,

    I would like to use WordPress (2.5) for my personal site, consisting of a blog, a portfolio section, about page and contact page. The last two are just static pages, that’s not the problem. The first two however, don’t seem so easy to achieve with WordPress. But I love WP, so I really want to use it!

    I searched a lot on the topic of running multiple/seperate blogs and there are several options given to hack this in, but I would like to keep it as simple as possible, maybe even just using the default WordPress features.

    I hope someone can point me in the right direction to go, given the functionality I need, wich is:

    – a normal blog with default functions (tags or categories, archives, etc) like any other.
    – a portfolio section with category pages for my work (print, web, photography, etc). No blog functions like comments, search or archives needed. Just pages with all posts in a category.
    – a horizontal header with tabs to the different sections (portfolio,blog,about,contact)

    I’ve been thinking of making 2 categories (blog and portfolio) to seperate the blogs, and using tags as categories, but maybe that will screw up the whole install.

    Hope someone can help me, thanx in advance!

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)

  • Very easy mate.

    You can disable comments on your static pages from within the GUI and with a few simple tweaks you can even have different sidebars displaying depending what page you’re on so blog pages will display things like categories and archives while your portfolio pages can display things like your flickr for example in the sidebar.

    As for portfolio sub-categories I think you could probably achieve this with standard parent-child categories.

    I think this is very doable, moreover if done right it will be really sweet.

    Thread Starter spscheele

    (@spscheele)

    minute44: thanx for your reaction! What your saying is using static Pages as category pages right? Although I can’t submit projects as “posts” than, that’s maybe the most non destructive way to do this indeed.

    About the parent-child thing, you mean using the option of Pages having a parent Page right? So I start a Portfolio (parent) page that has multiple (child) category pages.

    No, no..

    Have your blog basically serving as your portfolio like you said, and have static pages for your About and Contact pages. then have something like site.com/blog with a seperate install, serving JUST as your actual blog.

    Thread Starter spscheele

    (@spscheele)

    minute44: Ah ok, that’s a whole other story ??

    I don’t want to install a full second copy of WordPress, that’s why I’m asking if there are less bulky ways to do this.

    You brought me to a good idea though, so I’ll maybe just try it with using static pages for my portfolio and then hardcode the menu’s myself. I’ll just have to update things a bit more by hand then.

    If someone has a better idea, let me know!

    Had a thought about this… I’m sure it would be entirely possible to create a category called Portfolio and have a link in your main navigation that opens a page displaying only “portfolio” posts. Then it kind of gives you a perceived seperation between normal blog posts and items in your portfolio.

    Thread Starter spscheele

    (@spscheele)

    minute44: yes that is indeed possible. The thing is that I can’t seperate these posts again into sub pages (interactive work, print work, etc).

    I could use a couple of special “portfolio categories”, that don’t show up on the main blog, but appear as seperate portfolio pages with only those hidden categories on it..

    That’s not going to be an easy thing to do I guess…

    my head hurts!

    Here is what I’d do:
    – one WP install
    – 2 (main) categories: blog & portfolio
    – exclude “portfolio” from showing on the main page
    – eventually, have subcats for your print, web etc.
    – you can use Category_Templates to have a different design/layout for your categories
    – related to the one above: you can even have post-templates-by-category (plugin) to present your blog and your protfolio in different ways; which should solve the no comments and similar issues
    – the menu should be the least to worry about it: just get a working structure and the menu is easy to accomplish

    p.s. (EDIT) using the word “pages” is always confusing because people tend to think about Pages which is the wrong solution…

    Thread Starter spscheele

    (@spscheele)

    Moshu: Your right, that may be a good solution for me, I’m going to check it out! Thanx a lot!!

    Thread Starter spscheele

    (@spscheele)

    The modifications I’m making brings a next question. How do I get the main navigation at the top of my site (hardcoded) to display the current page as “active”. For the blog and portfolio it will depend on category, but for the contact and about page it will have to look at the page id or something.

    I’m used to working with a <body id=”generated name of page”> and then using css to style the menu item/tab as active.

    Can someone shine a light on this for me? Maybe there’s a better way in WP to do this that I’m missing?

    for what its worth, there are some really stunning wordpress portfolio themes out there. this is the first one in a quick google search;

    https://webrevolutionary.com/sharpfolio/

    oh and this is from a wordpress cheat sheet i have;

    Site Page Links
    This snippet will first echo the text “home” with a link to the home page. Next, it will echo the WordPress
    pages links in a list, in order defined by your settings, excluding the child pages, and excluding a title
    header for the list. If one of the pages in the list is active, the link for that page will be assigned the class
    “current_page_item”, which can now be styled in your CSS. Place this code in the template files. 

    <ul>
<li<?php if(is_home()) { ?> class="current_page_item"<?php } ?>><a href="
<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>">home</a></li>
<?php wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&depth=1&title_li='); ?>
</ul>
    Thread Starter spscheele

    (@spscheele)

    Great Theme you found Boober, Thanx. I’m using my own design but it looks a bit like the Sharpfolio layout. I’ll have a look at it.

    What I want to achieve ultimately is this hirarchy:

    /blog = show posts for parent category “blog” using template A
    /blog/apple = show posts for child category “apple” using template A

    /portfolio = show posts for parent category “portfolio” using template B
    /portfolio/print = show posts for child category “print” using template B

    /about = show static page “about” using template C
    /contact = show static page “contact” using template C

    Notice that I don’t have a “home” page, you always land on my portfolio. That’s another problem, cause you can only select to start with a static page or your last posts, in the WP settings panel.

    Thread Starter spscheele

    (@spscheele)

    Ok I just found this fancy url hierarchy thing works almost out of the box in WP ??

    I changed the Permalink Structure to a custom /%category%/ and then it will display categories like I want as well as static pages.

    For starting with my blog as a “home” page I used this before the loop:

    <?php
   if (is_home()) {
      query_posts("cat=85");
   }
?>

    So the only thing I still have to figure out is how to keep my current page “active” in the main navigation…

    So the only thing I still have to figure out is how to keep my current page “active” in the main navigation…

    thats what the code does that i gave you…

    Thread Starter spscheele

    (@spscheele)

    Ah sorry boober, I overlooked that. thanx!

    Another thing I’m thinking about is how I make my portfolio (the protfolio categories) discoverable by search engines, but not my blog (blog categories). Anyone know how to do this? (a plugin maybe?)

Viewing 14 replies - 1 through 14 (of 14 total)
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