Before you rush off and install your new Revolution theme, take some time to plan how your website or blog will fit within the structure of Revolution.

In this article, you will learn about planning for categories. Whether you already have an established blog with existing categories, or you are just starting a new one, category planning should be completed before you install your Revolution theme.

Before we talk about how you can plan your categories, first you need to understand how categories are displayed in Revolution themes.

Notice the two rows of menu links across the top of Revolution themes. The top row corresponds to individual Pages that are outside of the blog category system. The bottom row corresponds to blog categories. In the figure below, you see the drop-down menu displayed for the category called, “Wordpress”.
This category combination is referred to as parent-child categories. This means that a category parent, in this example “Wordpress”, has child or sub-categories. In this example the child categories are: Contact Form, Domains, Web Host, Wordpress How-to, and Wordpress Plugin.

If you have categories in Wordpress that contain at least one post, the category automatically displays in the menu area.

Now, let’s get back to your plan. Let’s say you have an existing blog with 25 categories that do not use the parent-child relationship. Then you have 25 top level categories that would not fit within the Revolution theme row space allocated for menus.

The categories would just wrap around in a very messy fashion that would cause you to freak out when you see the result of installing your new Revolution theme.

Instead, do the following:

1. Make a list of all your categories and group together the categories that make sense.
2. For each category group, pick one that is the best “Parent” category (the one that will display in the theme menu.)
3. Log into your Wordpress Admin panel.
4. Click Manage > Categories.
5. Select each potential “Child” category and assign a Category Parent.

Do this for all identified Child categories. When you are finished, your Wordpress category list will look something like the example below, and your Revolution theme menu will look great:

If you plan to install Revolution on a new blog or website, you are in a perfect position to give some thought to what your categories and subcategories may be.

Parent-child categories are not a requirement, but rather a extra benefit for organizing your blog. For instance, if your blog only uses 6 categories, you probably will never have a need for child categories.

Sidebar Category Display

If you also display categories in the blog or website sidebar, you can choose to display these as a parent-child hierarchy or not.

With a little thought and planning your blog will be well organized and structured, and more inviting to your readers. Of course if you are using a Revolution theme, it will look GREAT!