Sigh. Why does everybody want to do things the hard way? Static Pages should be *rare* on most WordPress sites. There are a few exceptions to this, but for the most part there’s no reason for them.
See, WordPress already has several different built in pages to do what you are describing.
Author pages, for example, show posts by one author.
Category pages show posts in a given category.
Tag pages do the same for tags.
All these are built in, you don’t need to do anything to enable them. And if you want to customize them, then you can do it without making actual static Pages.
Read these:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
http://codex.wordpress.org/Category_Templates
http://codex.wordpress.org/Author_Templates
Once you understand those and need help with specifics of how to customize your site, then we can help you with your detailed questions.
Ok right I’ve had a look at all this and understand what you are driving at. However it doesn’t fulfil the needs of this site. As I stated I need some static pages which then have a link to a blog from that author. The static pages are promotional will give background detail about the author a picture and all that kind of stuff. Then at the bottom you will find a link to their blog with the latest posts first. Ideally I would like to be able to show topic that the author has been discussing and they then go to the post of that topic.
I may be getting all this mixed up but it seems obvious to me that static pages then posts is the way to do – if I’m wrong tell me and I will return to wade my way through the documentation some more.
As I’ve said this is much more of website with a blog element rather than a pure blog
So, these authors aren’t part of your blog? Their posts are not on the site?
Yeh sorry they aren’t what it is I have a number of local celebs who want to write for my site. They want a static profile page with a pic etc then want to be able to have their own blog pages within my site. SO what I wanted to do was put a simple link that would go to a list of all the posts they have made with a small description next to each
So the navigation would go like this
1) Celeb A, page with pic and overview with link to celebs own post list
2) Click link to go to a list of posts made by that celeb
– displaying all posts by that celeb in date order with links to the actual complete post entry
3) Click link and post is displayed.
I think you are using some confusing terminology. Is this what you mean: the celeb authors will write an article, it will be uploaded to YOUR blog. And you’d like readers of YOUR blog to be able to access the articles of a particular author. And while accessing those articles, also see the author’s pic, and whatever else. Is this correct?
If so, then you do not want STATIC pages, you want the Pages that have DYNAMIC content ie: the descriptions of the current topic that the author is writing on. IF, and I do mean, *IF* this is what you are after, then you will want to use the “Page-Author” template. Look at the codex links above, get an understanding of the Loop, and how the templates are chosen, and used. When you develop your author’s landing page, you write the content in Write >>Pages, and select the “Author” template. Then you’ll need to get into that template – and customize it, so that when a reader lands there (in your blog), then the author template will pop up with: Author’s pic; author’s current tags (or topics); author’s list of recent posts.
Theoretically I think this is possible, but you’ll have to do some work looking into the possible “Author” template tags, and “author” plugins, to get all that data onto the Page-author template. Or write your own template if the theme you are using doesn’t have that one. When you get stuck with writing your template, THEN you’ll have a detailed question, that we can help answer.
Good luck,
Cathy
Yeah, I’m still confused.
So, you want Pages with the Author profile information but without their posts on it? Just a link to them?
That seems like a really poor design to me, but hey, whatever.
You’ll need to make a static Page for each author and then add the link to their normal author pages (which use author.php in the theme). The normal author pages will show the list of posts by that author (this is built in).
Yeah, I just ignored that request for a link to a list of posts. lol
Otto, how do you know what a theme’s template will be named? and what will be on it? (I’d like to know that too)
Oh, and I’m wrong about the page-author Page Template? ooops. I love these forums – i learn something new all the time.
Thanks folks looks like I’ll go for trial and error on this one – describing things in a forum isn’t always that easy.
Either way thanks for your time and your funny comments – lol
Otto, how do you know what a theme’s template will be named?
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy
