One of the most common back-to-school questions we have been getting lately has to do with how to use one blog with multiple classes or subjects.
The good news is that our newest custom menus feature makes this even easier!
This is ideal if you want to put up a post or question geared only towards one group of your students. They will see a link for their class in the top menu navigation of your blog, and once they click on that link, they will see only posts meant for them, with the most recent at the top.
Don’t let the length of the instructions fool you – it really is easy to setup, and once it is done, it will last you all school year 
Step 1 – Choose what should be shown on your “home page”
Option 1 – All posts are shown with the most recent first – this what you are most likely used to
Option 2 – A “static home page” where you place a welcome message or important announcements
What we will be doing is assigning categories to certain classes or subjects. Because of this, you may not want all posts to show on your home page – what people see when they first visit your blog.
If you are ok with all posts, no matter the subject or class, showing together on your home page, then you won’t need to do anything special and can skip right to Step 2.
If you go with the static home page (Option 2), then you will first need to create a new page, just like any other page, and put in the information you want people to see.
Then, go to Settings > Reading in your blog’s dashboard, choose ‘Static Page‘ and in the drop down, select the new welcome page you just created.
Click ‘Save Changes‘.
You will be able to go back and update this page with new announcements whenever you like – but users that have subscribed to your blog feed or by email, won’t receive any sort of notification.
You can also create a new blank page called something like “All Posts”, and choose it under the posts dropdown box so that there will be a place for all posts to be shown on your blog in one place.
Step 2 – Create categories
Go to Posts > Categories and create new categories for each class, year, or subject that you want to appear in your blog’s navigation menu.
You will need a category for every post you write if you are using the static home page from step 1.
As you publish new posts, make sure to assign them to appropriate categories. You will get an error message when you click on a category that doesn’t yet have a post assigned to it. You can also assign a post to more than one category, which is great for news you want to share with all groups.
Step 3 – Create a custom menu
Go to Appearance > Menus and create a new custom menu for your blog.
Once you do this, all of the links at the top of your blog will disappear and you will need to add them back using the custom menu.
Visit our help site on custom menus to learn more, or check out the video below:
Going from here…
If you have this up and working and would like to share, feel free to leave a comment below letting us know!
For more information on setting up a class blog, check out the ongoing Class Blog series on our Teacher Challenges free professional development blog.
Interesting that this post should arrive soon after I needed to make changes on my own blog. My problem was the things in my header were covering the title so they needed to be reorganized and you directed me to creating custom menus. That was helpful.
I think that over time our blogs become much like closets. We collect things, add more all the time, and have trouble tossing things out. That’s where I am now. I think I need lots of sidebar space so I keep the three closets, er… columns, to hold everything but even I can be overwhelmed by the visual challenge of this many options on the screen.
Thanks for yet another cool blogging lesson.
The most important thing about blogging is to be organized. This is going to help your reader to find what topic they are interested in easily. Besides, it will make it easier for your reader to know what topics tackled in your blog.
Thank you for showing us how to do this.
I have a different version of the problem. My school has Edublogs campus, so each of my students has an individual blog. If I make them all use the same category (or tag), is it possible to have an RSS feed that would show all the posts from the domain having that category?
Hi Rafael,
There isn’t currently a good way to do that, but sounds like a great idea!
Hi Rafael and Ronnie, I’m a bit behind in reading these comments.
But we can provide an RSS for a tag or category across an Edublogs Campus site.
Sorry Ronnie and totally my fault for not mentioning that we can do it.
Rafael – Can you tell us which Edublogs Campus site you are using so I can follow this up for you.
As for me it’s becoming really simplier to understand!
Thanks for the times, will implement this asap
After reading all of these helpful hints on educational blogs, I feel empowered to create my own.
I’m sorry but, I STILL don’t get it.
thank for posting this
Okay, I did that! It took me longer than it should have because I couldn’t believe I was going to be stuck in my theme with such an ugly random-looking Main Menu. It’s enough to make me change themes! Thank you for an excellent tutorial!
Sandy
Does anyone have any suggestions for a clean theme where the mutliple menus will work. I am using the classic one but that does not work with this.
Does anyone have any suggestions for themes to make my classroom site. I like the Classic Theme because I can upload pictures on the header that my students will recognize.
But I need one where I can have a different “page” (is this what I want) for each class. I want it so each class can be a a different stream of posts. I teacher 3 algebra classes and 2 physical science classes. Ideally I would like a different blog stream for each class and have my home page as general updates and announcements.
Hi Stephen,
Custom navigation menus with drop down menus will work on all Edublogs themes and almost all Edublogs themes support the ability to upload your own custom image header.
However, as you also want to have updates I would set up the Updates (or News) as a separate menu item using a category and make your homeapage a Static homepage. Otherwise all the posts will appear on the homepage which may end up confusing your students.
Please let us know if you need our help setting it up.