How to create a Categories page in Wordpress

Usually categories are listed in the sidebar of a Wordpress installation. However,we can do a lot of things with Categories.

In this case we will create a Categories page using Multi Column Category List plugin. By this way, we will create a new page with a custom category template, and then list each category under alphabetic order using 3 columns.

Preparing a custom template

We can create a custom page template very simple. Just create a categories.php file and add the following tag at the top:

Upload your categories.php to your theme directory. Also you may create a sidebar-category.php in case you wan to display a different sidebar for that page. If yes, duplicate your sidebar.php and create sidebar-category.php and also upload that file.

Then, we are ready to create a new Page and name it Categories. We need to choose the just created categories page template so we can customize it with our own design.

So, go to create new Page and write something like this:

Then, choose the uploaded categories.php as Page Template.

Using Multi Column Category List Plugin

In our case, we are using Multi Column Category List plugin, so if you want to follow the same steps, you need to install it and activate it in your Wordpress installation. After you install it, you will see a new configuration option in the wp-admin sidebar. Go there and choose how many columns you want to use, and if you want to group categories in alphabetic order (grouping under the first letter).

Remember to upload the .css file under your theme directory.

Other things you can do with categories

There is a great article under JTPratt’s blog describing other ideas how to tweak or hack categories in Wordpress.