Are you looking for a way to create custom categories on your WordPress site? Categories are an important part of every website because they help organize your content and make it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. When a site visitor clicks on a specific category on your site, they’ll get taken to a dedicated category page where they can view all of the content related to that category.
WordPress themes typically have built-in templates to showcase your category pages, but not all themes handle your category pages equally well, which is why you may want to create a WordPress category template of your own or tweak the way your content is displayed.
Depending on your website, you might even want to customize the way each category page looks, which means you’ll need to amend or create a new categories template. This article will show you how to create a custom category page in WordPress.
Why would you want to create a custom WordPress categories template?
Your WordPress theme will determine the way your default categories page template looks – and it may not be to your taste or even suited to your content. You may find yourself in a position where you’d like to keep your theme, but you want to change one element on your categories page. Here’s where creating a custom category page in WordPress comes into play. You may want to:
- Add a banner image above the category list
- Add an image next to each category title to improve navigation and discoverability
- Redesigning the category list
- Add features like drop-down menus to select different categories or sub-categories
- Change the colors of the category list or add a background image
- Display different category lists on different pages of your website
- Add a description of specific categories on their site
- Change a selected category template to look different from the others
Ultimately, customizing your categories template can help you improve the look and feel of your website, and can help you improve the user experience of your website since users will have a better time searching for content by category.
How to Create a Custom Categories Template in WordPress
Next, we’re going to show you how to use different methods to create a custom category page in WordPress. Some of these methods are more complex than others.
Method 1: Modifying template files
WordPress generates individual category pages for all of your categories, which generates a URL like this: https://example.com/category/fashion
If you want to customize the way your WordPress category pages are displayed, you’ll need to edit the template. First, you’ll need to determine which page in the Template Hierarchy you want to change.
WordPress looks for a template in a pre-defined hierarchical order: category-slug.php → category-id.php → category.php → archive.php → index.php.
WordPress will look for each of these files in turn when trying to load a category page, and if it can’t find it, it moves up the hierarchy. It will start with a category-slug template first, e.g., category-fashion.php in the above example.
If it can’t find a category-slug template, it will move up the hierarchy to find a template with the category id number, e.g., category-2.php. After that, it will look for a generic category template called category.php.
If WordPress can’t find a generic category, it will look for an archive template like archive.php. If that doesn’t exist, it moves to index.php to display the category.
If you want to alter a specific category template, you’ll need to identify the Category ID and amend the category-ID php file or use the slug to make your edits or additions. You can also alter the category.php file to amend the template for all categories, but you can also use conditional tags within the category.php file to edit the template for one specific category, without having to create individual files. We’ll show you how to do this later on.
You can locate the correct file you want by going into WordPress > Appearance > Themes > Theme File Editor. From the list of theme files on the right, click on category.php. If you can’t find the category.php file there, look for the archive.php or index.php files. You can create any missing files you want (such as category-slug.php) using SFTP.
If you’ve followed these steps but can’t locate the correct file, you are probably using a WordPress Theme Framework, so these tips won’t apply to you.
If you can find the files above, copy the contents into a text editor to make amendments. You can make edits directly in WordPress, but that could easily break your whole site with a PHP error, so it’s not recommended. It’s best to download the file from SFTP and then upload the amended version.
The way you upload the new file back to WordPress will depend on your host’s file management system. Managed hosts may have a custom dashboard where you can upload files, while other hosts may offer a common file manager like cPanel. FTP is a common option for uploading files to your WordPress backend.
Most well-managed WordPress hosts, like Kinsta, will have a staging feature where you can upload your amended categories template file and see whether you implemented the changes correctly. If your host offers this feature, you should always use it just to be on the safe side.
Connect to your WordPress host using your FTP client, and then upload your amended category-slug.php file to the theme directly. Any changes you’ve made to your template will only appear on this category’s archive page.
If you use this method, you can create templates for as many categories as you want; just make sure to name your field correctly.
Here are a few ways you can edit your category pages:
Adding Text Above Posts
If you want to add static text above your posts (e.g., text that stays the same, regardless of which posts are displayed below), you need to add the following code snippet above the Loop section of your Template file:
<p>This is some text that will display at the top of the Category page.</p>
Adding the Category Name on the Top of the Page
If this isn’t already part of your template, you can add this code above the Loop:
<p>Category: <?php single_cat_title(); ?></p>Displaying Images Linked to Full Posts
If you want to replace post content with images that link to full posts, you need to put featured images into the Excerpt Sections of your post. Then put this code in the template instead of the _content:
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php the_excerpt_rss(); ?></a>
Method 2: Adding Conditional Tags
Whenever you create templates for your theme, you should determine whether or not you really need a separate template to do what you want to do. Sometimes the changes you’ve envisioned aren’t too complicated, and you can implement them by adding conditional tags inside a generic template, e.g., category.php.
Conditional tags can be used in your Template files to change which content is displayed and how that content is displayed on a particular page, depending on what conditions are matched to that page.
You can use the conditional tag method for various scenarios, such as:
- You want to display a line of text only for a particular category
- You want to show a number of posts for a particular category
- You want to show the oldest content first for a particular category
WordPress supports several conditional tags, e.g., the is_category () tag. You can use this to change templates to display a different output if the condition is matched. For example, if you have a category on your site called “Fashion,” you can add the is_category (‘Fashion’) to your template file and then use additional code to determine what should happen when this category is selected. This could include displaying a picture of a dress or fashion week on this category page.
The process for editing template files to include conditional tags is exactly the same as we’ve described above.
Method 3 (Recommend): Use Codeable
Both of these methods are doable if you are quite tech-savvy. The advantage of coding yourself is that you can customize your category templates to look exactly the way you want them to. However, if you aren’t familiar with coding, it’s probably best not to experiment with making changes on your own.
You can use the WordPress site editor as a quick fix, but it’s very limited in what you can do, and you probably won’t be able to create a category page that meets your exact specifications.
The best solution is to use Codeable, a WordPress freelancer platform. Codeable makes finding and hiring a WordPress developer accessible and affordable for everyone, so you can easily find a developer with the knowledge and experience to modify your categories page templates.
Codeable only uses vetted WordPress freelancers, which you can access in three easy steps: brief, connect and collaborate.
To use Codeable, visit the site and submit your project by describing what you need. It takes an average of 3-5 hours to hear back from Codeable. At this point, you’ll be matched with 1-5 WordPress developers who can complete your project for you.
You can chat with each developer to see which one is the best fit for your project. You’ll receive a single price estimate, which makes it easier to make a hiring decision based on quality (rather than choosing the cheapest option right away).
The developer you choose will create a custom category page in WordPress according to your exacting standards.
Create a custom WordPress categories page with Codeable
If you want to improve the UX of your site, encourage visitors to check out specific content, or just improve upon a less-than-ideal default template design, you will need to create a custom category page for your WordPress.org site at one stage or another.
This is especially important if you like the WordPress theme but don’t like the categories template – your only option is to create a custom template.
If you are confident in your coding skills, you can make these edits yourself. But if you are a novice, Codeable is the best way to find WordPress developers at an affordable rate to build custom pages for your categories.
Your WordPress developer will create a template that looks exactly the way you want it to look. There’s no risk of causing a code error that will crash or destroy your page entirely.
Why not submit your project and get your free quote today? You’re just a few steps away from getting a custom categories page that fits your exact requirements.
