This post introduces the SEO Siloing WordPress plugin, which is used to create an SEO Siloing site structure for your blog.
Prerequisites
This plugin should work with WordPress 2.0 and up, including WordPress 2.3 with its major overhaul of the category structure. It may also work with older versions, but I haven't tried it.
You would normally only use this plugin if you have defined the permalink structure for your blog to include the category name as described in Easy SEO Siloing for WordPress Users. In other words, all your postings use the form /%category%/%postname%/ for their permalinks. This isn't a requirement, though, but it's a recommendation. You can actually use the plugin on any page or post, but if you use it on a non-page you have to explicitly give it a category to display.
Installation
Like all WordPress plugins, this one's very easy to install. Download the seosiloing-1.2.zip file, extract the seosiloing.php file and place it in your blog's wp-content/plugins folder. Then open the WordPress administration console and activate the plugin.
Using the SEO Siloing Plugin
The plugin's primary purpose (so far) is to create category landing pages, which are static pages with links to all the postings in a given category. You can, however, use it to create pages with lists of posts in any category. You can even use the plugin in posts, but you'll have to explicitly specify a category name/ID.
For each category in your blog, create a static page (not a post) whose “post slug” (the name of the file) exactly matches the “category slug” of the category. By default, the category slug is the name of the category converted to all lowercase and with hyphens replacing spaces. For example, the “List Building” category's slug is “list-building”. You can view a category's slug from the Categories page under the Manage option of the admin console.
Place the following HTML comment somewhere in the body of the page:
<!-- seosiloing-category-posts -->
Save the page. When accessed, the page will create a list of posts from the matching category.
You can also force posts from a specific category to be displayed by using this syntax:
<!-- seosiloing-category-posts#name -->
Replace name with the name or the ID of the category you want displayed. For example:
<!-- seosiloing-category-posts#general -->
This syntax lets you use the plugin within posts.
If the category cannot be found, a customizable error message is displayed. A customizable message is also displayed if no posts exist in the category.
Note: The normal category pages are still available via the usual /category/name/ syntax and those pages are untouched by this plugin. The point of the plugin is to create landing pages within the same URL hierarchy as the posts themselves.
Customizing the Output
Under the Options menu in the administration console you'll see a new entry for the SEO Siloing plugin that lets you set various options, including what to sort the posts by (title is the default).
Feel free to report any bugs/enhancements to me.
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Of all category organization plugins, I can honestly say that yours has held up through the WP updates that seem to break many others. As of yet, I haven’t updated my WP but when I do I’m sure your plugin will be one of the only ones that still work! Good job.
the previous issue i reported has been fixed. i had every post linking back to its prespective category posts except for one category of posts.
category A,B,C
post 1-5 on cats A & B linked betweeb each other,
post1-5 on cat C didnt. once i manually added the
“”
to that categories posts, the main page then showed the most recent posts.