Using categories to organize multiple classes or subjects on your blog

The most common questions we’re asked are how to use one blog with multiple classes or subjects; or how do I send posts to multiple pages on my blog.

The good news is it is really easy once you know how!

Here’s how it works!

All you need to do is assign different categories to posts, such as assignment, discussion and dates, and then use a custom menu to create links to each post category in the top navigation of your blog.

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.

You can see it in action on CES Music Blog.   If you hover your mouse over Music Classes it displays links to the different Grades and all you need to do is click on a Grade to view all posts published for that grade.  For example, here are all the posts for Grade 5.

Here’s the step by step instructions for setting it up on your blog!

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: Publish a new post for each subject area or class

The first step is you need to publish a new post for each subject area or class with the category assigned for that subject area or class.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Go to Posts > Add New.

2.  Add your title and post content.

3.  Click on Add New Category, type your new category name and then click on Add New Category.

Here’s what it should look like when the category is assigned to the post:

4.  Now click Publish.

Repeat the process to publish a new post for every subject or class.  As you’re publishing the posts you’ll see them posted on your homepage.  Don’t worry about this!  We’ll show you how you can change this is step 3!

Here’s what your categories might look like when you are finished publishing all the posts!

Tips:

• If you want to use the same discussion question and have each class respond with comments for just their class then you need to write one post for each class and only assign one category to that post (i.e. their class category).
• If you are writing a general news post that applies to all subjects, or classes, and don’t want each class to respond with comments just for their class, you can assign the one post all categories.

Step 2: Create your custom menu

The next step is you need to set up your custom menu by following these instructions:

1.  Go to Appearance > Menus

2.  Give your menu a name – ‘Main’ will work great!

3. Click on the ‘Create Menu‘

4.  Select your categories you want to add to your menu then click Add to Menu.

5.  Now select the pages you want to add to your menu then click Add To Menu.

6.  Create a custom link for home by adding your blog URL, the name Home and click Add To Menu.

• When readers click on the Home link they will be taken to your front page.
• For example the blog URL of this blog is http://theedublogger.com/
• You can use custom links to link to any website — which is really handy!

7.  Now drag/drop the menu items to change their order in your menu.

Any menu item that is indented will appear as a nested page under tab.

Here’s what my menu now looks like:

8.  Once you’ve finished changing the order click Save Menu.

9.  Now to display your new top navigation on your blog you just need to select Main from under the Primary Navigation drop down menu and then click Save.

Cool tip:

You can create static level tabs using a custom link if you just want a link name that doesn’t go to a page that exists.

For example, if you click on About in the top menu of this blog you’ll see it is a static level tab used just as a placeholder for page  links we’ve added underneath it.

Step 3 – Choose what should be shown on your “home page”

By default, your home page is your blog post page however you can change this so your homepage is  a static front page and your posts are sent to a different page on your blog.

Because you’ve assigned categories to certain classes or subjects. you may not want all posts to show on your home page.

If you are ok with all posts, no matter the subject or class, showing together on your home page, then you’re finished and your class blog is all set up.

However, if don’t want all posts displaying on your homepage then you’ll need to create a static home page.

Here’s how we are going to do it:

1. Publish a page that has information you want people to see when they first visit your blog.
2. Make your front page display a Static page.

Here’s the step for you to follow:

1.  Go to Pages > Add New.

2.  Now just give your page a title, add your content and click Publish.

3.  Go to Settings > Reading

4.  Choose ‘Static Page‘ and in the drop down, select the new welcome page you just created.

5.  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.

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.