- - New Projects
- - The Projects Project Series
My First Project
The first project I’m working on is the overall of the Projects category. I would like to put together some kind of overall theme and order to what I do as I add more stuff to this site. Like a basic design or layout. The biggest first issue I have is the way things display using just the category pages as my “index” for that Project.
Categories
Just using the category page as a jumping off point for each individual project works okay, but there are certain design elements built in to the theme I’m using that really annoy me.
The first is the header image. There is no easy way to modify the header image for a category archive page. I can hack the theme, but I really don’t want to do that. I was hoping to find a plugin that would work, but I can’t find anything simple.
The second is the way it displays the “Title” of the page. I really don’t like the way it starts with “Category:” and I want that gone. Again, I can probably hack the theme, but I really don’t want to. Again, I hoped maybe a simple plugin could do it, but no luck.
Elementor
No luck, sort of. Elementor Pro can definitely do what I want, maybe. I’ve used the free version off an on for some things. I’ve kinda hacked around with it to to get it to do things the Pro version can do. It may be worth the price tag to go pro, but even though it seems I can do with it what I want, I’m not so sure it can totally do it seamlessly.
And that’s the big rub, I don’t want parts of the site to have a different feel from others. I need to find a way to keep the unifying structure of the site. I like that posts change the header to the featured image. I like being able to control that in certain ways. I don’t like that I can’t control that on category pages. I like that I can change the title of blog posts. I don’t like that I can’t change that completely on the category pages.
The Angry GM
So I went back to the site that started this whole thing, The Angry GM. He inspired me in many ways, so why not look at how he’s doing it a bit closer with all this in mind.
And that’s how I figured out that once again I’m doing it all wrong. Or at least thinking about it all wrong. He’s not using categories, and neither should I. Categories are great for broad things, like The Daily Grind, or Projects. But I shouldn’t use that as a way to break down an actual individual Project.
Series
See, a specific Project is a series of ideas. They will flow from idea to idea. Sure, they’ll likely be in chronological order, but there’s more to it than that. So with that in mind I’ve got to look at adding a new taxonomy to the site to account for that.
And there’s plugins for that! I’m not sure if I’ll be using the same one he uses. It’s not easy to tell exactly what he uses, but I’ve found one that seems to be up to date and compatible with my version of WordPress. It’s simply called Organize Series. So now I need to start playing with that to see what I can do with it and if it really can do what I want.
