Add Link Categories

I know you’re itching to get the site looking exactly how you want it but it’s going to be tough without some content. The links and posts you’ll be adding to the system fall into one of two different groups: Posted Links and Static Links. Posted Links are created as Posts in WordPress and are considered the “time sensitive” links on the site. These will be ordered from newest to oldest, vertically, and will drop off of pages automatically depending on how you have the site set up. Static Links are created as Links in the system and stay on the site pages as long as you leave them there. Comparing this to DrudgeReport.com, Posted Links are the news links at the top and Static Links are the outgoing “blogrolls” on the bottom.

Categories will do two things: they will organize your content and they will determine how it is displayed on the site. With that in mind, you’ll want to create categories that help you do both of these things, either together or separately.

A common way to organize your site is as follows (each grey box is a widget, something that is covered later in the documentation):

For this set-up, you will have 3 Posted Link categories and 3 Static Link categories, one for each link type for each column. This is the simplest way to manage a single page of links to sites, news, and other posts. Another way, however, would be to create categories based on what type of content you expect to post and then organize your homepage using these. An example:

This set-up is still using columns and widgets to display the information but now they are separated not just by location but by content type as well. The 3rd column is being used as a “sidebar” of sorts for ads, links, and anything else (including category links, archives, social links, search, etc). You can see that the homepage layout is very flexible.

Regardless of what set-up you choose, you’ll need to add categories for both links types.

Add Posted link categories

1. In the admin menu, click Posts > Categories.
2. Under “Add New Category,” enter the category name in the “Name” field and click the Add New Category button.
3. Repeat this step to add new categories. You can edit existing categories as well but, keep in mind, if you’re using category pages, the previous links to these pages will break if the slug is changed.

Add Static link categories

1. In the admin menu, click Links then Link Categories.
2. Under “Add New Link Category,” enter the category name in the “Name” field and click the Add New Link Category button.
3. Repeat this step to add new categories.