Internal Linking

Welcome to WP!

What do you mean about “will have blog formatting, but I don’t want it to be a blog”? If it’s something you plan to update/write on regularly, then it falls in the blog family, even if you don’t consider it to be such, and “posts” would be the way to go. If you’re building a site where you’re not writing something regularly, but instead adding a link to a list, then yes, “pages” is what you want.

If you’re writing articles and are worried that things like pings, trackbacks and comments will make it seem “bloggy”, all that can be turned off or removed, but WordPress is there to manage your content, let it do it! ?? Using categories with your articles will sort your articles by topic without you having to do much manually. The category list will show up in the sidebar, and clicking on a title will bring up all posts (articles) under that category. If you want to link to the category pages in a link structure, or an external page, you can copy the category URL and use that just fine.

Hope that helps!

(Oh, and I’m not sure about shortening the URL, but I’m sure someone around here, or the codex does! ?? )

Thanks

What I meant by “will have blog formatting, but I don’t want it to be a blog”, is that it may look like a blog, but the pages won’t be my current thoughts, opinions, etc.

You also said “If you want to link to the category pages in a link structure, or an external page, you can copy the category URL and use that just fine”. I just wanted to make sure I’m understanding correctly:
-What did you mean by “category URL”? because I was also concerned about my regular pages’ URL’s, and I thought categories were for posts?
-My pages will not get 404 bad links once I move them to my main directory

5. Is copying and pasting my “regular page” hyperlinks to its specific “list page” is the most effective way to do this, or is there a plugin for this, etc.?

6. I also had to create new pages that had a “page parent” (not a specific category, like in posts) that I’m not quite sure I understand, because the parent page (in my case the “list pages”) doesn’t have any links to it’s “under pages”, that I could find?

I think I’d still primarily use posts instead of pages if I were in your shoes.

Use my site as an example (which is bloggy, but hopefully can help point some things out visually): https://www.haveyoumettony.com

The pages are listed in tabs across the top right, and consist of things I rarely ever deal with. If you click on “100 Things”, it goes to that page, and you can see it’s unique URL in the address bar of the browser:

https://www.haveyoumettony.com/?page_id=736

Now, go to the right sidebar under “Categories”, and click “BGSU”, you can see all the posts under the “BGSU” category come up, as well as it’s unique URL up top:

https://www.haveyoumettony.com/?cat=5

(Incidentally, my WordPress is installed in it’s own directory, but under “Options > Permalinks” in the admin panel, I have it set to take the WordPress directory out of the links.)

So, in your case, you can write posts about humor, advice, etc., categorize them appropriately, then link to the category later so only posts related to that topic show up later.

As for page parents, I really don’t understand much about them, as I have never used them.

This does look somewhat what I want my site to look like, but to be safe, I should show you mine:
https://www.toptenlisted.com
(I wasn’t originally sure if you could list websites or not)

I essentially want it to have the same look and feel of this setup, but I’m just converting everything into wordpress, which I think is easily readable, better for SEO, etc.

Thanks Again

Posting sites is encouraged, within reason. There’s a line between spamming and others having a clue what you’re getting at. ??

I think you’re in good shape, and following what I’ve posted thus far will get you on that track. With your site, I’d draw the “posts vs. pages” line clearly between your two menus.

Everything in the top menu (About Me, Contact, Submit, etc.) should be made as pages. They are made up of items that don’t appear to change all that often. Then, I’d take all your “topics” down the left side, and create them as categories in WordPress. Take each list and copy it into an individual post and categorize it appropriately.

After that, when you click on the “Advice” category link, you’ll get a list of the latest XX posts (you can specify that in the admin panel, I believe) with an excerpt to go with each one. (An example would be what I showed when clicking on one of the category links at my site.)

From there, there is much more you can do to fine-tune the appearance, you can add “recent posts”, probably pull the excerpt out altogether, etc. It’s just a matter of getting dirty and playing with things. This forum and the codex is your friend. ??

The site is coming along nicely,
I took your advice and wrote everything in the appropriate categories; still have some more questions though:

Where in the “admin panel” can you find those things?

Right now whenever I click on “advice” category, it shows the latest post entry, with links at the top saying “<< Previous Entries” etc. So where could I go to shorten the posts shown, then have guests click on a link to view the whole post? (can’t find it in the admin panel)

Also, is it possible to make “pages” menu at the top, or put links on the left side, etc? I’m using the default theme right now (Would you need a certain theme to assign structure to the site, etc?)

Some of that stuff (how many posts to be shown, how much of the excerpt, etc.) needs to be handled in the code under Presentation > Theme Editor, I believe, or at least I don’t know how to do it through the admin panel.

As far as linking pages on top of the site, of course you can do that! If you’re familiar with CSS, it’s fairly easy, just add a div inside the bottom of your header and link to the individual page URL’s. If you’re not familiar with CSS, there’s any number of WP themes that have page menus across the top.

I figured out how to shorten posts, you just enter the “<!–more–>” tag into the code of the post.

As far as link position, I didn’t realize CSS was attributed to it. I’m still not very familiar with div tags though, would you create them as a “menu item” like home, or about site, etc?

CSS just tells it where to go. For pages, create an unordered list (the

tag) and use this:

<?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=’); ?>

Are you working with a theme, or trying to replicate the look you have now?

I’m still working with the default theme, just experimenting.

So what would I apply an unordered list to, the about pages, etc?

I would try putting it in the header <div> (in Theme Editor, click “Header” on the right), like so:

<div id="header">
	<div id="headerimg">
		<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
		<div class="description"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></div>
	</div>
        <div id="pages">
          <?php wp_list_pages('title_li='); ?>
        </div>
</div>

You may need to add a #pages { } to your CSS to get the width and all down, but that should get you closer. (Understand that it’s early and I’m just tossing out untested ideas, but I think it’s the right path for ya.)

I don’t think it will let me edit it because below the codebox it says “If this file were writable you could edit it”.

I appreciate the code, but I wouldn’t know how to edit the #pages { }, where in the CSS to get the width (I have some knowledge of html, but I’m nowhere near an expert at it)

Your best bet then might be to shuffle through various themes when you’re ready to play more with the design.

https://themes.wordpress.net has a bajillion themes for preview and download. If you ignore the colors and images (they can be changed easy enough, honest!) and find a structure you like, you can make it your own.

As far as the “If this file were writable…”, it sounds like a permissions deal, which I’m real hesitant to give advice on since it tends to open up security issues. That might be something for another thread, or I’m sure has been brought up in a thread somewhere.