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I'm trying to create a church site using WordPress.

The following is a small sample of the page structure I'm trying to create:

About

  • Staff
  • Statement of Faith
  • Contact

Ministries

  • Furnace Prayer
  • Common Grounds Group
  • Transformations
  • Youth Group

About and Ministries are not actual, physical pages. They just serve as a logical grouping of the pages.

With this structure in mind, I'm trying to accomplish a couple things that I can't quite figure out:

  • I'd like to create the menu items, About and Ministries, on a site-wide menu located in the header. However, I do not wan't to create the typical drop-down menu that lists all the pages underneath each section. I simply wan't the menu item to take the user to the first page underneath each section. So, if the user clicked on About, it would take them to Staff; and, if the user clicked Ministries it would take them to Furnace Prayer.

  • On each page (Staff, Statement of Faith, Contact, Furnace Prayer, etc.), I will have a sidebar. On the sidebar I would like to put the text of the page's section as a heading (for Staff it would be About; for Furnace Prayer it would be Ministries; etc). If I was able to create categories for pages, I would do that; but, it doesn't look like I am able to do that with WordPress.

So, how can I accomplish the above mentioned problems? I could probably create a parent, empty page to stick the subpages under and then link to the first subpage in the menu, but this doesn't seem like the correct way to do things.

I hope this makes sense. If I need to clarify the questions, please let me know.

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3 Answers 3

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You could go about the actual structuring of the pages 2 ways:

  1. Create a Ministries page, leave it empty, and use it for only organizational purposes and set the rest as children...probably not the best method
  2. Create a Ministries Category, then create the pages (with no parents)

The menu is gonna work the same way regardless, pick the one you want first, put it on the menu (Appearance->Menus), and change the display text.

I'm not sure what exactly you're looking for on point 2 of your question, but you may want to look into the Widget Logic plugin, it should be able to do what I think you're asking to do, if you clarify a bit on that I wouldn't mind helping out.

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  • I updated the question. I don't think I can create categories for pages, though. Otherwise, yeah, this looks to be the right way to do it.
    – Stephen Watkins
    Jan 26, 2012 at 20:17
  • yes you can, use post types and taxonomies
    – andresmijares
    Jan 26, 2012 at 20:59
  • @Steve: that's not correct, see register_taxonomy()
    – mor7ifer
    Jan 26, 2012 at 22:43
  • Ahh, ok, I see now. I was confused with post types. I thought that meant a type of post. But, I see now it can mean pages as well. Thanks a lot for the guidance.
    – Stephen Watkins
    Jan 26, 2012 at 22:56
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Are you worried about the link structure? cause if you are not, you don't need to create the Main parent page, you put the minister you want page in the menu and rename it Minister.... if you are concert about the link structure, you can easy create a custom post type called minister and create all minister inside.

About your second question, I think you should redact it again, cause is really hard to understand.

Regards.

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  • I updated the question.
    – Stephen Watkins
    Jan 26, 2012 at 20:16
  • Steve, as I see, all you have to do is create post types, they also allow you to create taxonomies that work as categories for it (If you are concert about the link structure. yoursite.com/ministers/blablabla and yoursite.com/about/blablabla) if you don't care about the second structure, just create the pages normally and in the menu place any you want to open you when click the "grouping menu name" and re-name it as "Minister" or whatever is the case.
    – andresmijares
    Jan 26, 2012 at 20:57
  • For the second it sounds like a breadcrump to me, if you want to keep the link structure again the only way is going for parent - child relations or post type and taxonomies, make sure you take a look at this codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies
    – andresmijares
    Jan 26, 2012 at 20:58
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For some time it has been possible to build your own menus via Appearance -> Menus. I recomment using this functionality.

You can create a dummy entry that serves as structuring element by adding a custom link with empty URL field.

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  • Thanks, but can I: 1) Link that dummy entry to a page (I don't want a drop-down menu)? 2) Display that dummy entry text in the sidebar?
    – Stephen Watkins
    Jan 26, 2012 at 20:42
  • You can definitely do 1); the whole solution is a workaround in the first place as WP does not have an empty box entry. I don't know about 2) (mostly because I don't know when you want to show it there).
    – Raphael
    Jan 27, 2012 at 7:16

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