Display Only Post Titles on Category Pages

23 Responses to “Display Only Post Titles on Category Pages”

1. Deb on June 2nd, 2008 6:43 pm

   Daniel, this is a great tip, especially for a relatively new WP user such as myself. I’ve successfully implemented it. An unexpected outcome, though, was that my MONTHLY ARCHIVES pages now also show up as unordered list links, plus also with the title I had added to the archive.php file (i.e., Archives for the “[Category name]” Category), like the title that shows up on your category archives pages.

   Is there a way to keep the the newly modified CATEGORY PAGES as you’ve instructed, but have the MONTHLY ARCHIVES pages be something different — either ordered list links, or the full posts or excerpts — and also either not having a title or having a title that’s different from what currently shows up on the Category archives pages?

   Or do both the CATEGORY and ARCHIVES PAGES have to be treated the same?

   Thanks for any help.

2. Felipe Goncalves on June 2nd, 2008 7:37 pm

   era disso q eu tavo precissando .. valeu Daniel !!

3. sonia on June 2nd, 2008 8:00 pm

   hmm.. really? I have to say I completely disagree. I have found people are more likely to click on the post if they know a little something about what it’s about.

   My titles (especially my older posts) are often “cutesy” or “pun” intended sort of titles, and almost never give a clear jist of the post. With my titles, I also like to encourage, “oh..what’s that about” response. So people often do not know what my post is about from reading my title (which I want).

   I actually changed my wordpress template so that the summary would show up because I was finding less traffic otherwise.

4. Tim on June 3rd, 2008 12:29 am

   I enjoy your blog especially your video blogs. However the video blogs are always fuzzy/blurry making it very difficult to exactly see what you are describing. This is true with the standard youtube window or full screen.

5. Rajaie AlKorani on June 3rd, 2008 12:52 am

   I’ve been doing that ever since starting my blog, but this is the first time I here of that plugin. Thanks for sharing and great tutorial!

6. SE7EN on June 3rd, 2008 3:04 am

   I used to display only title in my category archive page, then change to excerpt.
   I’ll put only-title on all-post index by category and by date later.

7. Bill Stevens on June 3rd, 2008 3:09 am

   I’ve always admired your archives and categories pages. I just figured this out a couple days ago but not with this plugin that you’re talking about. Popped over to WordPress.org Codex and read about how to do it in code. Nice to know about this though. Thanx!!

8. Daniel Scocco on June 3rd, 2008 7:39 am

   @It depends on how your theme is structure. You could also use an IF clause on the PHP code to separate the two, but this would require some PHP knowledge. Personally I think you could leave monthly archives with post titles only also.

   @Sonia, have you tracked the numbers with and without excerpts? I would agree with you for the homepage, because people are seeing those posts for the first time. But when someone goes to the categories section, he is probably looking for something specific, and wants to find it as fast as possible.

   @Tim, this is strange, I asked a couple of friends and they all told me the videos look OK. I will as some more to see if its the case to do something about it. Thanks for the input.

   @Rajaie, welcome.

   @Se7en, that works also.

   @Bill, welcome.

9. Joe Cole on June 3rd, 2008 10:35 am

   This is my first time here and I like your video

10. Louis Liem on June 3rd, 2008 11:48 am

    I’m agree with Sonia on displaying excerpts on archives page. People don’t see the whole blog content on the homepage and post list with some explanation is better than a descriptive title alone.
    Or we can also use sitemap page to display only post titles.

    But I guess it depends on our readers’ behavior. How they like it better.

    I’d like to add more tips if you don’t mind. It’s about how to exclude posts from certain categories to appear on our homepage and feed and the reasons why we may want to do it. Please check out my name.

11. GolfSpy X on June 3rd, 2008 12:20 pm

    Good tip Daniel…how are you doing the videos?

12. Kimberly on June 3rd, 2008 12:22 pm

    I think this is a great idea, and I would love to implement, but your videos are also a little blurry for me and I couldn’t tell exactly what to do with my archive.php file. I took a guess based on what you were saying, buy my post titles ended up all over the page (but with the bullets)? Any chance we could get a few clearer screen shot of the before and after lines?

13. Daniel Scocco on June 3rd, 2008 2:03 pm

    GolfSpy, with screen capture software.

    @Tim and Kimberly, I guess I should have focused more to show the specific text in question.

    I will work on improving the quality for next videos.

14. Vaibhav on June 3rd, 2008 2:40 pm

    Hi, I am recent reader of your blog. My two cents on this topic:

    I think regular users would be much better off using the “Search” box on the blog if they are looking for something in particular on the blog.

    Else, it is much better to use some excerpt of the post on the pages. Although one learning from this is that you can definitely make the category pages more compact when displaying the content and not spread out like they usually are.

    Cheers.

15. Tarso Teixeira on June 4th, 2008 1:39 am

    Daniel,

    Is the video still available? THere is some problem with this one…

    Cheers

16. Daniel Scocco on June 4th, 2008 6:34 am

    @Vaibhav, I would guesstimate that the same amount of people use the search function and the category navigation page. Hence, if you have 5 posts per category pages, and 30 posts on that category, someone would need to flip through 6 pages before he can arrive at the older posts. Do you really think anyone would do it?

    @Tarso, working fine here.

17. Vaibhav on June 4th, 2008 10:00 am

    @Daniel – i am not at all questioning the logic of showing only titles. All I am saying is that if someone is looking for something specific (as would be the case if he has to go to the 4th or 5th page to find it) then its much better off searching for it rather than flipping through categories pages.

18. Esteban on June 5th, 2008 5:12 pm

    Hello Daniel, I’m a usual reader from your blog and your tips are great, i will try to apply this new one to some commercial blogs I have.

    Greetings from Uruguay!

19. kc on August 13th, 2008 11:33 pm

    EXCELLENT Tutorial and outstanding tool for long lists.
    Thank you!

20. junky on January 10th, 2009 12:51 pm

    hi

    nice tutorial, I was searching for a such solution, I want to list Post Title only in one Category, for instance Category ID 40 I call this Category “News”
    How can I list Post title only in this Category?

21. John on April 30th, 2009 1:25 am

    Oh wow, thank you so much. I’ve been trying to figure this out for months! One quick line delete and it was all fixed.

    Thanks!

22. medyum on July 19th, 2009 9:06 am

    I think this is a great idea, and I would love to implement, but your videos are also a little blurry for me and I couldn’t tell exactly what to do with my archive.php file. I took a guess based on what you were saying, buy my post titles ended up all over the page (but with the bullets)? Any chance we could get a few clearer screen shot of the before and after lines?

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