2 Blogs in one - Different Templates/sidebars for different Categories

[section25 0]

one of my sites www.250credits.com is part blog part log of educational activities - for the latter i have lots of custom categories/taxonomies to mark these posts according to various criteria displayed in a "busy" sidebar id like to seperate the two aspects so that the busy side bar only shows up for those posts where relevant - the "cpd log" category or whatever - can i do this easily using iblogpro or platform pro? I found a link from another post http://mattmedia.net/2007/10/09/how-to-set-up-custom-wordpress-category-templates-in-four-easy-steps/ - i'm thinking that iblog pro is better for this if we're talking customised templates but i'm not sure in any case in iblog pro can i just show the main parent categories rather than a list of them all - i think this may be a function of my plugin I guess i could do it in platform pro including or excluding different widgetised areas on individualised post pages - is that the best way to go? - thing is some of the stuff dumped into the blog later becomes a learning item - i could then change the page properties but it would be easier if i could just change the category

[bryan-hadaway 3]

Every category already has a posts page. So if you have a category named Cats then you have a category page here: http://www.yourwebsite.com/category/cats/ Now use Appearance > Menus to create the appearance of two separate blog pages. You may wish to try a plugin as well: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/blog-in-blog/ Thanks, Bryan

[section25 0]

ok thanks - very quick! - I understand what you say but that doesnt allow for different sidebars/widgets depending on the categories?

[bryan-hadaway 3]

You would use this plugin for that: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/ With over 13k plugins you'll find that just about everything you can think of is covered. Thanks, Bryan

[section25 0]

thanks that pligin did it - eventually!

[ghampson 0]

Hi Bryan, Alan, Bryan---do you have any other recommendations for this issue. Create a custom field? Create a "category" template? I'm finding that widget-logic is way too clunky for me. I haven't been able to find a simple off-the-shelf widget that simply detects the category and supplies the posts in that category only (and then supplies all posts for the home page). Mimbo Pro does this well, for instance. I was drawn to Platform Pro by the claim that customizing categories would be a breeze, but I'm new to this tool and still grappling with it. Many thanks, Glenn

[section25 0]

I got it working quite well and quite logical once I understood conditional tags a bit better not clunky apart from my standard widget sidebar in admin could get a bit crowded depending on the total number of different possible widgets that could be displayed across the different post and page categories - I like the clear delineation through iblog folder Icons. again I'm sure I'll try move it back to platform if I can understand that better - like you say I thought that had more inbuilt customisation - not clunky but a bit complicated for me at prent