shovi

didn’t work, but I fixed it thanks! and for anyone else interested here’s what I did:

* created a category.php Template for all of my child categories, which didn’t have the PHP code above.

* created a category-#.php Template for each of the main categories, and instead of $parentcat above I put the category #.

* styled the category-#.php Template to look nice, using info from the wp_list_categories documentation page.

sorry if I’m not being clear, part of the problem is truly that one word means like 10 different things in this world…you have to be extremely picky about how you say things.

okay different approach, taking into account davidchait’s comment above.

there are four blocks of text/information/copy/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it on the homepage. three of them will pretty much stay the same, changing once in a while. one (#3 in the sequence) is just a “featured post” for which I have created a separate Category; there will only ever be one post in that category, albeit the post may change from time to time.

so how’s this angle…put each of those blocks of text as posts in the “Featured” category, and then just show that category on the homepage of the blog.

I can then use a Category template for that page to make sure the styling is the way I need it to be, and HOPEFULLY there’s a way to make three of the four posts “sticky” so they can retain their position in the sequence of my homepage.

please tell me this makes more sense.

thanks…is it the one that is called “get recent posts”? that one seems to do what I need it to, but I’m still back to being able to insert the post between other editable content.

okay, new approach…I am creating category-#.php pages in my theme files and want to drop the child categories using wp_list_categories at the top of each category-#.php page. this will give me a title page for all my topics, but leave the rest of the blog alone.

two issues combined into one…wordpress doesn’t recognize the category-#.php (# is obviously replaced) file. I’m using permalinks instead of index.php?cat=#, is there a setting I’m screwing up? and once that’s fixed, can I use that code above (and hard-code the category # in the child_of attribute) and get this to work?

hardly a dynamic approach to this, but hey, whatever works. thanks to the community for your help!

cool, that the hide_empty parameter worked (sort of)…one more thing (only because I’m on a deadline and it’s a little cumbersome searching this support forum…)

if I use
<?php wp_list_categories('orderby=name&hide_empty=0&child_of=8'); ?>
how can I replace “8” with a dynamic category variable, so that whatever category I’m viewing I can only see those child categories (and that would mean when I’m at the deepest level this menu won’t show at all right?)?

I’d also need to format the whole thing, but I found some relatively straightforward documentation on the wp_list_categories page.

thanks!