Possible to turn a page into blog?

I’m listening here too.
Several blogs in one installation, which appears as extra pages. Please help.

Several blogs in one installation
WP doesn’t have multi-blog feature.

As for the OP question: what about using categories?

I am trying to do this same thing. I have a blog with a very specific content focus. I want to add a tab next to my “About” tab that will load a page containing only blog posts that are “off topic.” Similarly, I don’t want my “off topic” posts to appear on the main page.

I want to keep the same theme, etc. I just want a way to have a tab that isolates my off-topic posts from the main site. I’ve been researching for hours and came across a plugin called “Super Categories” and another called “Multiply,” but neither seem to support WordPress 2.2 and are spotty at best. WordPress Mu seems like overkill and I don’t want to risk breaking my already-running blog.

I know there are ways to hide categories from the main page, but it seems the only way to display them on their own page is through an archive link, which doesn’t have the same appearance as a true ‘main page.’

Any help?

Edit: @op: I think we are having the exact same issue, I just tried to go into a little more detail. If this isn’t want you want, let me know… I don’t want to jack your thread.

LoP,
I disagree with everything you wrote about the possibility to achieve what you want only with categories. It is ABSOLUTELY doable.
1. As you figured out: use a plugin to exclude “off-topic” category.
2. Use Category_Templates to get the look/design you want for off-topic.
3. As for the menu on the top – you have more than one options:
a) Make an empty Page and use the Redirectify plugin to point it to your off-topic category
b) add the Link for your off-topic cat manually into the wp_list_pages list

Did I miss anything?

@moshu

Thanks! I’ll give it a shot. I was just having a problem getting the category page to look right. The way I was doing it before, it would just look like a standard archive page, which is not what I want. I’ll delve into it further.

Can you recommend a particular plugin for hiding the “off-topic” category (Edit: I’m using WordPress 2.2)? I had been messing around with hand coding it before, but a plugin could really streamline things.

I don’t know if it would work – I think it would – but couldn’t you just write a custom query before the Loop, so that if the “Off Topic” category is pulled from the database, it’ll skip over it on all pages, and then on the specific category page, you could write another query to *only* post the off-topic stuff?

By default WP allows you to add a post to more than one cat. So just edit the loop. Have I missed something?

I’m admittedly new to WordPress. The reason I’ve been having a problem with the “look” of my page is because my theme doesn’t have a category.php file, so WordPress defaults to archive.php.

Now, the “Off Topic” category on my blog is category 19. So, I created a category-19.php file for it (which is based on the index.php file). Shouldn’t this be the page that is pulled up when I click on “Off Topic” on my main blog since it is highest in the template hierarchy?

The problem with editing The Loop is that I am using a K2 theme and The Loop is stored in its own .php file. I think my only solution is going to be to modify theloop.php to ignore the “Off Topic” category, hard code a navigation item that will take me to the category 19 page, and create a category-19.php with its own Loop. Does this sound plausible?

Yes. (I had to add I have no idea how K2 works, but normally, the scenario you presented should work.)

For category templates nobody should ever edit anything in the Loop. That’s not correct! <– this is for posters above…

For category templates nobody should ever edit anything in the Loop. That’s not correct! <– this is for posters above…

I didn’t say *in* the Loop, I said before it, as in the example link I posted…just to clarify. I may not be completely understanding what he’s asking for, but it *sounds* like a custom query will do what he wants…

Wrong again. If you have a template called category-19.php you do not have to add anything before, in or after the Loop.
WP knows that is has to be used to show only the posts from catgeory 19. Period.

OK, I am getting sick of explaining every day this Pages vs. categories thing… so here you go: read the tutorial

I fully agree with Moshu. If you want to separate Posts, the correct way to do it is with categories, not with Pages. There’s nothing preventing you from making a theme that displays tabs at the top based on both Pages and Categories, if you have both. Use the right thing for the job.

All this can be done with clever theme editing. But it’s not something I would recommend for a newbie either way. You need to know PHP, XHTML, and CSS. In other words, you need to be a web designer. If you’re just a blogger and not a programmer, then I say to look at having somebody else do it for you.

I fixed my problem on my K2-based theme.

I originally used wp_list_categories to make a link to the desired category, which worked, but was not visually perfect with the K2 theme. So, I created a page template in php that queried and displayed the appropriate category. Unfortunately, custom pages ignore the ‘more’ tag, but that was easily remedied with one line of code (“<?php $more = 0; ?>”).

After that, it was just a matter of hard coding a way to block the category posts from the main page.

There are a lot more complications when doing this in a K2-based theme that I will not go into now, but if anyone is curious I’d be more than happy to explain all of the extra kinks. It mostly involves heavily editing theloop.php so that the category pages don’t appear as condensed archive pages. If you are doing this on a non-K2 themed blog, Moshu is correct: No need to edit The Loop!!

Again, thanks to everyone, particularly moshu, for the help!

Well, that’s the most idiotic thing what the K2-type themes introduced: having ONE Loop in a separate file – which defies the whole idea of customization through template files, if every template is calling the same loop. (I know one can apply a million of conditional tags in there but why make things in the complicated way?)