Has the post been published or is it saved as a draft? Categories will only appear when they have a published post attached to them.

yes i published it. It works fine on my pixel theme site and goes up on menu bar , but for this pinknpurple theme site for some reason its not happening ..

if you would like to see it you can go to mydomain/pencil-portraits

I can't see pencil portraits on either of the domains I have been looking at - which domain is this on?

It looks like the pinknpurprle theme is not set up to have new categories added to the menu bar. Trying adding the categories widget to the sidebar to see if the category is listed. You can remove once you have checked.

Thank you. its on natalieportraits ,if you type thatdomain/pencil-portraits you will see the page, and it does go on categorized, but i really need it up on the menu bar though. i have tried other themes and seems like themes that have "home" and "about" on its menu bar, you cannot add anything else on the menu bar,and thats with most themes .

OK, yes I see it.

The pinknpurple theme isn't set up to display the categories in the location you want it to.

Log in and go to the theme editor area and locate header.php.

Look for this

<ul id="navmenu">
<!-- To show "current" on the home page -->
<li<?php
if (is_home())
{
echo " id=\"current\"";
}?>>
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url') ?>">Home</a>
</li>
<!-- To show "current" on the About Page -->
<li<?php
if (is_page('about'))
{
echo " id=\"current\"";
}?>>
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url') ?>?page_id=2">About</a>
</li>
</ul>

and replace it with this

<ul id="navmenu">
<!-- To show "current" on the home page -->
<li<?php
if (is_home())
{
echo " id=\"current\"";
}?>>
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url') ?>">Home</a>
</li>
<li<?php
if (is_category())
{
echo " id=\"current\"";
}?>>
<?php wp_list_categories('&title_li='); ?>
</li>
</ul>

There is one slight problem; with the old code the active pagelink changed to black; with this new code I cannot replicate that. I have tried a few different bits of code but I can't get it to work. It is probably something simple and maybe someone reading this will know what to do?

thank you so much. i will give that a try

thank you so much for your helps. it worked very well, but at the top of each page it reads "Archive for the 'pencil portraits' Category" and i was wondering if i can get rid of "archive for the" and "category" you would see it on my site. Also i removed what you asked to get rid of the date time,etc, and "edit this page" but it didnt work as they are still there..

My easiest solution for this is for people to stop using Wordpress for a normal site. It was meant to be used as a blog. There can be tons of coding that needs to be changed for every thing to work right and even appear the way it should. I would switch to a CMS designed for what you are doing. Ie e107 or Drupal even though I still fell it is the devil Joomla will work better for you.

__________________

thank you. ill look into it.

hi again! I had a question regarding setting up my my-oil-painting-techniques website,as i have better idea how i want it to be navigated

So i would like to make the homepage the latest posts and just all posts, then on the menu bar, i want to have categories: portrait/figurative, still life, landscape, tutorial.

So i was wondering if it would be ok to use those words above and if it would be ok for search engine rankings because they are not high profitable words or anything, but i feel that it makes most sense.

portrait/figurative category will be about about the posts on figure and portrait paintings and drawings

still life: on still life paintings and drawings

landscape: on landscape paintings/drawings

tutorial :will be tutorials on drawing and painting

thanks again.

Hi there!,

Sorry about the delay getting back to you.

I have had a look at the site and it looks like you have the site running the way you want it to - latest posts on the home page and categories on the menu?

Did you know you can use the "more" function in each post if you don't want the home page to be too long? Log into a post and switch to HTML mode, then hit the "more" button after a paragraph or two - this will add a "read more" link to the post on the home page. Alternatively, you can paste this code <!--more--> where you want the "read more" link to be.

As for search engines - try this tool to see what people are searching for freekeywords.wordtracker.com

I would stick with the most obvious words for your categories and users, but when you write posts try to think about what you find out at WordTracker and choose words and phrases that are searched for often, but not too competitive (can be tricky these days).

The numbers you see on WT may be low, but think of these figures as a representation and not the actual amount of searches performed by surfers, because that is what they are.

Hope this helps? Give us a shout if you need more advice.

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Hi! great to see you again!

So I take it that the category words dont need to be the good profitable words i find on wordtracker? Do my category words look alright? because "portrait/figure" reads "portraitfigure" in the link, like mydomain.com/portraitfigure, so its not a profitable word at all.

I still wish I can have the pages I add on the menu bar instead of the categories. Because what I really want to do is to ,for example: when people click on "figure/portrait" on the menu bar, they would see the page with thumbnails of the artworks, then they would click on it and the blog post(s) of that artwork would show up.Some people here have given me some themes that allows the pages to be up on the menu bar, like the studiopress theme, but I really like the theme i have now and trying not to change it.

Thank you so much for getting back to me with your help

Your categories have to descriptive and on topic, yours look fine. You can have a single post in multiple categories if you wish.

The adverts you have on the page look relevant too, so I wouldn't worry too much about your categories - but pay a lot of attention to your post titles, they are very important.

You can change the url by logging into WordPress and editing the category section.

Posts > Categories

On the right hand side of WordPress (I am using version 2.7) you should see a list of your categories. Click on the one you want to edit and look for "category slug". This is what makes up the url/address and if you have "portraitfigurative" change it to "portrait-figurative" (hyphens work best) or whatever you want the address to be.

The pages issue is all down to the theme you are using. Themes are fully customizable and can have code added and taken away to add or remove features.

If you follow the technique I mentioned in my previous post what you are trying to achieve will work.

Try this: Create a new post and place the picture(s) you want people to see at the very top, even before you start writing. Underneath the picture type <!--more--> and publish.

Now click on the category page and you should see the picture with a link underneath it saying "read more" (or whatever expression your themes is using). Clicking on that link or the post title will then take the reader to the post so they can read the full article and see the other pictures.

Pictures can also be made into a link, but I think the only way to link the picture to the url is to edit it after the post has been published, as you would be able to copy the url from the address bar.

Does that make sense? Try adding the new post and <!--more--> to see if that is what you want to achieve.

I will check back in a few minutes but I have to go out soon...so you might not hear from me straight away.

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EverydayHowTo.net | Quick Recipes | Desktop Wallpaper

thanks again, but i dont think i want to use the "more" feature.. I just really wish i can figure out how i can have the pages i add on the menu bar instead of the categories. just cant figure it out