If your theme supports custom menus like the twenty eleven theme then you can just add the categories to the menu tree, like this test website, all the menu items are just categories selected in the custom menu screen.
Screenshot: Admin > Appearance > Menus
The home page can then be a static page or a latest posts page.
HTH
David
Thanks David,
so with the custom menu, do the categories listed in the menu bring to pages with just posts that are in that category? Can you set these pages up with different page templates?
Many thanks
Frank
The link just appeared on your reply, just viewed site, looks like just what im looking for!
But are these pages that can have different templates? (different headers on each one)
How would i use the functionality from 2012 and put it into my theme, i am building from scratch.
Thank you.
Frank
Best advice is to try it!
do the categories listed in the menu bring to pages with just posts that are in that category?
Yes only posts from the category are returned to the screen.
Can you set these pages up with different page templates?
You would not need a page template unless there was something specific for that category, then you would find the category {slug} News would be news
Open category.php and save it as category-{slug}.php, make any category specific changes.
News Category page would then be category-news.php
EDITED:
But are these pages that can have different templates? (different headers on each one)
With a little code, this post extending the categories, has different headers per category and much more, the theme in the link you can get from here, that has eight different content layouts, between the two you could do what you want.
Note: the theme in the link and my website are both twenty eleven child themes!
HTH
David
Ah right, you can set up php template files. Nice one, i’ll give it a go!
Very Helpful, thank you!