Setting Up Site Linking Structure

[habelow]

I have some questions concering how to set up our blog sites in regard to linking structure. I'm a web developer who's fairly new to WP so please bear with me.

It seems like there are 2 way to push content to the site:
1) Add a post
2) Add a page

The posts get added to a category and it looks like all posts to the same category get added to the same page, as well as the home page.

Pages behave more like normal web pages it seems. They get added in a hierarchical fashion just like regular web site navigation and thier links appear at the top.

My first question is what do we do with our 5 or 6 articles when we create the site? If we post them to the blog they will all apear on the same page unless we create different categories for each. If we publish them as pages they will create links across the top of each and every page.

SEO wise it doesn't make sense to have all the articles on one page. Ideally I would like one article per page and not have internal links to them except via links in the content of each article and on the home page. Is this possible?

I also tried to create child pages and they did not show up even when I clicked on the parent links. Do we have to do anything to extra to show child pages?

If anyone has any insight or experience on site structure using Wordpress to create these little article sites it would be greatly appreciated

[charlie]

Here's how posts work, they will appear on the home page until newer ones push them off and they will appear on the category page until new ones in the category push them off and they will have a page of there own forever.

[Marc]

Hi Habelow,

I can see where your questions come from since my ex-job was a Senior Web Developer.

With wordpress and no doubt your experience I can see where you may struggle with the logic of the setup of wordpress.

In the 90 day challenge the only "pages" you will create will be for reviews of affiliate programs (between 3 and 4 of them and they will come accross the top)

Then everything else you post will be as a "post".

As for SEO, having been an SEO consultant for the last 2 years, and heck part of any SEO membership you can list. I can say that wordpress is one of the easiest systems to use and achieve rankings with.

I have many many blogs that are raking extremely well for high end terms.

As Charlie has mentioned they get pushed down as newer posts are entered into the page.

As for Site Structure, well traditionally my guess is that you would be used to splitting things into their topical categories for easy reference as a web master.

Do the same here, if it belongs in a specific category, create a new category for it.

You should try to keep say 15 main categories, I wouldnt go to many more then that.

I am thinking of moving entirely to a tag based system, but need to look into that further.

Regards
Marc

[habelow]

Marc,

It seems like Charlie is saying new posts will push older posts off the page, whereas you say and I agree that they get pushed down on the same page.

My real issue I guess is the home page of your site. Since new posts push old ones (down or off) you can't have your home page first post that explains what the site is about stay there permanently.

So it looks like if you want to have a nice homepage that remains the same, you need to have the blog in a subdirectory and create a non blog home page using some other tool.

After returning back to the carautionreview site, this now looks like what you did there. Am I correct?

If this is the case, how do you suggest we build a homepage that mimics the blog template fairly easily? What kind of linking structure do you suggest on the home page?

Thx!
Howard

[charlie]

Originally Posted by habelow

Marc,

It seems like Charlie is saying new posts will push older posts off the page, whereas you say and I agree that they get pushed down on the same page.

My real issue I guess is the home page of your site. Since new posts push old ones (down or off) you can't have your home page first post that explains what the site is about stay there permanently.

So it looks like if you want to have a nice homepage that remains the same, you need to have the blog in a subdirectory and create a non blog home page using some other tool.

After returning back to the carautionreview site, this now looks like what you did there. Am I correct?

If this is the case, how do you suggest we build a homepage that mimics the blog template fairly easily? What kind of linking structure do you suggest on the home page?

Thx!
Howard

In wordpress there is an option that determines how many posts will display on a page. if that number is lets say 3 and you post a new article it will push the article that was listed third off the page.

There is a wordpress plugin that allows you to create a page and make it your home page. With this plugin you will get the exactly what you want a static home page.

I struggled with the same question you have when I started using wordpress. Everything I had learned said I needed a static home page. But once I started using wordpress without a static home page and it started to work very well I realized that:

1. Very seldom does anyone come into your site through the home page. When I search google over 80 percent of the time I end up inside a site not on the home page.

2. The fact that the home page and all the inter-category pages are constantly changing is a good thing from a google standpoint. It shows google that site is fresh and being updated. this has resulted in the bot visiting more frequently and diving deeper on my wordpress sites vs my static sites.

Your mileage may vary

Charlie

[habelow]

Ahhh now I get it. That's brilliant concerning the posts on a page option. Thanks for that information Charlie.

As far as the home page, being a web developer, I defintely have a certain hard headedness about this. But maybe its better to think outside the box and at least be open to testing this theory.

I will create some sites with a static homepage and some dynamic like you suggest and see what happens.

Charlie, can you remember the plugin you mentioned?

thx again,
Howard

[charlie]

Howard, here's the one I've used

http://www.semiologic.com/software/static-front/