organization and menus

u have 2 options…
1. use link manager from inside WP.
2. manually edit index.php

and if you use the link manager, be sure to give the full url (https://www ) not a relative url ??

Those menus you see on almost everyone’s site are simply html added to the index.php and some extra css. There isn’t really any “tricking” going on…just modificatons/additions to index.php.

ok.
it would not be difficult to add a menu to the index.php.
but as is true here at wp.org and alexking’s site, and photomatt and rebelpix, when a link in the index.php is selected you are taken to a URL that looks like this:
domain name/section
nice and clean.
now, i also know how to make a folder and put an index into it.
but how does the page you are taken to still look like you haven’t left wordpress?
is this playing around with wordpress’ permalinks?
geeze, maybe i’m just too stupid to do this..
*sigh*

You have to apply the same layout and css to those new files that you create. One thing I use are PHP includes files for my header, footer, the blog side menu, etc. That way I only have to change one file when I want to make a change instead of changing every page that uses that piece. Search for “PHP includes” on Google and you’ll find a ton of information.

The way most people do static pages AFAIK is simply as static HTML or PHP pages. I have an about section on my site…there is an actual index.php file sitting in an actual folder named about. This file doesn’t have any WP code in it at all. None!
Now….to achive the same look and feel across the site…All of my static pages have the basic wrapper divs used by the WP index.php and call the same CSS file so that it has the same style as my WP pages. I include the same menu and footer on all of these static pages that I do in the WP index.php. I did mine this way because I didn’t want to have my WP sidebar menu on the static pages, because it doesn’t really have anything to do with these pages. Does this make sense?

I think Chait did something similar to what I used to do with MT. Namely, create what appears to be a new page but is actually just a post within a unique category. In the case of an About page, you would make a post under the “About” category, create a category archive for “About” and then link to that as your About page. Of course, you’ll need to style your About page with a new template that hides the date, author, category, comments, trackbacks, etc. – all the things that visually separate a dated post from just plain content. The real trick is getting your index and archive pages to hide the About category when categories are listed.
Cool thing about it is it enables you to edit your About page from within WP cuz your About page is really just an entry under the About category. Other neat thing is if you ever want to add to the About page, you just make another post to the About category. Voila! It appears on the About page.
I prefer this method for creating “static” pages as well but mainly for odd reasons. I’ve got this weird philosophy that everything in a blog should be a post or consist of posts.
…or I could be completely wrong about the whole thing.

I think Chait did something similar to what I used to do with MT. Namely, create what appears to be a new page but is actually just a post within a unique category. In the case of an About page, you would make a post under the “About” category, create a category archive for “About” and then link to that as your About page. Create a new div style just for this type of post (what Chait referred to as “staticcontent”) that hides the date, author, category, comments, trackbacks, etc. – all the things that visually look like a dated post – and then in the About page it looks like pure content/text. The real trick is getting your index and archive pages to hide the About category when categories are listed. You’d also need to add mod_rewrite rules so that https://yourdomain.com/about/ maps to the same page as https://yourdomain.com/archives/categories/about/ .
Cool thing about it is it enables you to edit your About page from within WP cuz your About page is really just an entry under the About category. Other neat thing is if you ever want to add to the About page, you just make another post to the About category. Voila! It appears on the About page.
Personally, I prefer this method for creating “static” pages as well but mainly for odd reasons. I’ve got this weird philosophy that everything in a blog should be a post or consist of posts. If I ever get my WP site up, I’ll try to write up something about it. D. Keith Robinson’s blog Asterisk explained the concept for his Quicklinks in MT.
https://www.7nights.com/faq/archives/how_do_your_categories_work.php
https://www.7nights.com/faq/archives/how_are_your_quicklinks_done.php
…or I could be completely wrong about the whole thing.

this is all interesting…
MtDewVirus: yes i understand. That is essentially what i have opted to do. for some categories, i want an external link, but still want to keep the pages identical to the main site. And, for others i just want the shell as you’ve described so well.
junesix: interesting reading…
Most interesting was the example page using MT. links on their own page, archives on their own page, even amazon references in the side bar.
that’s really just what i want to do.
miahz: indeed. i see the new face of content management systems being this cms based organized roll of data being perhaps the most most flexible and personal method i’ve seen since hand coding page after page after page of html.
For now i am going to continue with the combination method.
but i keep peering at the permalinks settings page wondering if there isn’t some sort of answer in there…
couldn’t you establish a permalink to a cat, and then place it on the front page?
where can i read more about permalinks?
btw: i still haven’t got a clue how to place a css menu into my index.php
??
dss

Junesix:
yes indeed. this was the guide i looked over to make my single pages.
but i chose to use the single cat-duplicate index method, rather than blocking the posts from the main index.
i think, as i re read this, that that’s a pretty good idea actually. perhaps removing the blog-like tags is a good idea too.
very very cool.
thank you!
markku:
Well, i already posted a comment on your site. i love your work, you are really the reason i came to wordpress. amazing stuff, keep it up!
now if only i could figure out where in the world people are “testing” and “playing around with” your overwhelmingly beautiful photo script.
“comming soon” he said… and i just gotta hang in there…
dss

Junesix: thanks!
Only one catgeory can be hidden, but perhaps one could still have many ststic pages by creating a “static” category, hiding that and creating subcategories within it, one for each page?

Podz — why does 1.5 link manager suddenly insist upon absolute instead of realtive URIs? all my old relative links (originally stores in 1.2 link manager) get an ugly and non-working https:// thrown onto the front of them [ie ‘https:///artists_statement.html’%5D which a) kills them and b) means every time I mirror my sites (I manage about 7 sites with blogs for people) I’ve got to run SQL queries to redirect them to my test server.

Ah, relativity!