The migration from Page Options in Thesis 1.7 to the WordPress Category section under Posts in Thesis 1.8 enhances the Archive bloat pages with a visual customized look if desired. The current version of Thesis 1.8 adds SEO enhancement with Introductory Title and Content elements. Yet, with these enhanced SEO features I am experiencing that many users are void of this knowledge. To configure any tag page, login to your wordpress and follow Posts -> Categories, and under one Category or Tag click Edit.
It is worth to index Keyword rich Category titles. A prime keyword Tag can draw high traffic on its own through proper configuration.
Top Page Category Options
If you are adding categories to the Navigation Menu and want some categories to show in the drop down style choose the parent/child option under a parent category.
Lower Page Category Options
To spice up the Headline and Content of the category page you can add some CSS—change the css elements according to your website design.
#archive_intro h1 {margin-bottom:0.5em;text-align: center;text-weight:bold;font-family:Verdana;color:#993300;}
#archive_intro .format_text {text-align: center; font-weight:bold; color:#993300;}
The category bloat page will only display the number of titles that you choose to show on the home page. To show all the titles on the category page download the plugin called “custom-query-string“, Download CQS—just drag the php file to you server in your plugins folder. After activating the plugin go to Settings -> CQS and where you see query choose “is_category” and enter -1 under show posts and click add. What is nice about this plugin you can choose certain categories and choose to show the titles descending or ascending.
Visit Travel Enlightenment for an example of this configuration and mouse over “Countries Traveled” and view the different countries as children under the parent in the navigation menu. Then choose the Tag “Egypt“. The Introductory Headline and Content are added with CSS styling with bold, colored, and centered. All the posts show from oldest to new using Custom Query String. A function was added to show the dates under the title. If you click on the parent tag of “Countries Traveled” all posts will show from oldest to new, yet, these title links are set to “nofollow”.
To add Categories to the Navigation Menu and you are using the Thesis Menu migrate to Site Options -> Navigation Menu -> Categories, and highlight the categories you want to add to the Nav Bar. While you are in that section of site options, drop down the Home Link and click the Nofollow option, this option is good for SEO. Did you want to change the text of the Big Ass Save Button, just look to your right in Site Options in 1.8 and change the save button text to your preference.
You can choose how you want to show your archive/tag page by following Design Options -> Display Options -> Archives. You can choose from four different options: Titles Only, Everything’s a Teaser, Same as your Homepage, or Post Excerpts.
Any Ideas of your own? Please Share.
