Add a second blog to my page?

You can do this. I had the same problem, and have read many of the posts on this topic – and none seem to address it in a straight forward manner. I have solved it, but only after a fair bit of irritation.

What you need to do is investigate the ‘categories’ function. ‘Categories’ is one of those terms used without it really being explained.

When you first installed your WordPress blog, you probably had a default widget called ‘categories’ and removed it because it made no sense. You need to put that back in one of the sidebars (at least until you have set up your second blog page).

Next you need to go to your dashboard, click on ‘posts’ and then find ‘categories’. This will allow you to create a new category. You could call it ‘Blog 2’ or something (you can change it later). This new category will show up (right side of your screen) each time you write a new post. When you want a particular post to appear ONLY on the ‘Blog 2’ page, tick that.

Then you need to publish a ‘test’ post to that category. When you go to the home page of your blog, the category widget will have ‘Blog 2’ displayed. Click on that. You will see only the ‘test’ post. THIS IS IMPORTANT. You need to copy the URL at the top of the page.

Then create a new page (name it whatever you want your second blog page to be called). Then from your dashboard, go to ‘Pages’. Click on ‘edit’ to edit the page you have created and then scroll down until you find a field called ‘Page links to’. Paste the URL you copied into that and save the changes.

Now you will find that when you go to your site, you will have the second blog page displayed as a tab (alongside all your other pages), and when you click the tab, only those posts you have saved (in this example as ‘Blog 2’) will be displayed.

There will be another issue – you will find only an excerpt of the original post will be displayed – but this can be altered. so the entire post plus images are displayed. You need to go to your dashboard, click on ‘appearance’ and then ‘editor’. Then click on the ‘archive.php’ template and change this line

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

to:

<?php the_content(); ?>

This will solve the problem.

There really should be an easier way of doing this.

I’ve just discovered that this is a plugin. It doesn’t mention that it’s compatible with the latest version of WordPress. Ugh. This stuff is confusing.

Don’t edit the Twenty Ten theme. Your changes will be over-written the next time you upgrade WordPress or the theme. For this reason, it is recommended that you consider creating a child theme for your customisations.

Once the child theme is active and we can view the site, we’ll be able to answer the question. 🙂

Jduthoit, thanks for taking the time to answer my question. Sites don’t always have to be visible in order to address questions. I’m greateful that esmi pointed out the need for a child theme, but I’m in agreement that my question still warranted a proper response. I’ll post here again once I’ve followed your great instructions and let you know how things turned out. Thanks!

> Let me know if there’s a good reason why this won’t work, or why I shouldn’t do this…

There is no reason why you can’t make changes to the parent file. I updated to the latest version of WordPress (3.1.1) yesterday. The only alterations I needed to make – with specific reference to creating a second blog page – was the changes to the loop template, ie;
<?php the_excerpt(); ?> to <?php the_content(); ?>

I use the TwentyTen theme. I have made five alterations in all (for example, changing the height of the header image). I made a list of the changes I made, so that when a new version is released, I just work through and alter them again. It takes 10 minutes.

Like Big Moose, I will probably get round to creating a child theme one day, but for now it’s just extra hassle.