[Resolved] Hiding specific category types from the main blog feed on the home page

[Author]

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[seanM-4]

Tell us what you are trying to do? We're changing our main business type, and want to keep our old blog; but hide posts from a few categories from displaying on the main feed on the blog home page.

Is there any documentation that you are following? I don't understand the terminology of toolset well enough to even know what documentation I should be looking for.

Is there a similar example that we can see? No need -- I literally want the blog to work exactly how it works now, only not be pulling posts to the main home page from certain categories. Everything else stays exactly the same.

What is the link to your site? hidden link is the temporary staging site I have set up

[Christian Cox]

Hi, if I understand you correctly I'm looking at the homepage provided by your theme without any Toolset involvement right now, and you would like to simply filter out posts from certain categories. Let me explain briefly how this would work with Toolset. You would create something called a WordPress Archive with Toolset. That WordPress Archive would be assigned to the Blog/Homepage in the WordPress Archive settings.

Documentation for WordPress Archives:
https://toolset.com/documentation/getting-started-with-toolset/customize-post-archives/
https://toolset.com/documentation/user-guides/custom-archives/creating-wordpress-custom-post-archives/

You will design the loop of that WordPress Archive using the Block editor (drag and drop builder) or the classic editor (HTML and shortcodes). In the loop, you will create the design for one item, which will be used as a template to display the other items. In either editor you would basically have to recreate exactly what is seen in your current homepage if you want to mimic that design. In other words, you cannot import the design from your theme and make minor adjustments - you must start from scratch.

The Block editor doesn't provide a high level of customization, but will allow you to place the different pieces of information and add basic styles using a drag-and-drop page builder interface. The classic editor does not include a drag-and-drop builder, but relies on your own custom HTML markup, CSS, and our inline shortcodes to display different pieces of information. This editor allows more customization, since you have the ability to write the code explicitly. The information you can include in the loop might be the author name, post date, post title, featured image, excerpt and "Read more" link. One thing not offered by Toolset is the social media integration you currently have on your site (sharing to FB, Pinterest and Twitter). That could be achieved with a 3rd-party social media plugin or some other custom code.

I hope this helps you understand how the homepage might be created using Toolset. If you have questions about that, feel free to let me know. I'm not sure of your level of understanding of HTML code and Toolset in general, so this is just a basic overview.

[seanM-4]

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction!

I've already built most of what you describe using the block editor... but am running into a few issues. If you wouldn't mind helping answer these questions, that would be awesome 🙂

1. If I want to do more advanced changes... can I start with the block editor, and then just switch to the 'loop editor' view inside the 'edit wordpress archive' area (or somewhere different?)? Or would both methods have to be created from scratch?

2. On our current version, the post excerpt displays everything leading up to the 'more' tag that's manually written into the wordpress post... But inside of the current toolset layout, I can choose 'post content' or 'post excerpt'... Post content displays the entire post, which I don't want... and Excerpt cuts off after a specific number of characters or words that I can choose... Which, of course just cuts the post randomly rather than at a strategic 'get-the-reader-to-want-to-click-read-more" spot. It also loses all formatting/spacing/paragraphs, so it looks terrible if you do any more than a sentence or two worth of content.

How can I duplicate the current setup vs. the hard character/word cutoff? I've added the 'read more' option inside the block editor, which references that it will show all the content up to the 'read more' tag as the excerpt... but it doesn't seem to be functioning that way... and the read more button isn't showing up on these posts, at all, even if I choose the 'excerpt' display option... I'm assuming I've chosen the wrong element or a wrong setting inside that element - but I'm not sure what to choose, instead.

3. The pagination at the bottom of the blog looks good inside of the block editor... but on the actual draft site, it goes all the way across the whole page, into the next column, and then all the way off the page to extend the overall page with to probably 10,000 pixels or more because I have years worth of archives, which has turned into 261 pages it is displaying links to. How do I stop that from happening + customize how the pagination links are displayed?

Thanks again!
Sean

New threads created by Christian Cox and linked to this one are listed below:

https://toolset.com/forums/topic/can-i-switch-from-the-block-editor-to-the-classic-editor-when-creating-or-editing-a-wordpress-archive/

https://toolset.com/forums/topic/block-editor-doesnt-respect-read-more/

https://toolset.com/forums/topic/pagination-extends-across-the-whole-page/

[seanM-4]

Oh - and one more odd quirk that has just popped up.

Where I have 'written by' and on the old version, I was using "Display Name" for the author... Inside of toolset, I was able to use "display name" for user... but it's not displaying the correct name for the author of the post. I've double checked the author being correct inside wordpress... but it's showing the wrong names on the home page for the toolset-driven draft I'm working on... and then any of the archive pages when you go back to page 2, 3, 4, etc. all are just completely blank for the display name, and instead just say: "Written by" with nothing after it.

Did I choose something incorrectly or is this a bug?

Thanks again 🙂

New threads created by Christian Cox and linked to this one are listed below:

https://toolset.com/forums/topic/author-name-is-incorrect/

[Christian Cox]

Sure, I have split these new questions into separate tickets. This helps us keep the forum organized.