If you want to customize your site it’s best to have things separated. The default wordpress theme comes with an archive.php that handles category, all archive, tag and author pages. So if you want your category pages to look different than the other pages you will have to separate them by creating a category.php file. Doing so is really easy so don’t worry.

The first thing you need to do is create a new file called category.php. Wordpress automatically checks for this file and if it exists it will use this file to show category pages instead of archive.php. After you create your category.php page place the following code inside it:

<?php
/**
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage Default_Theme
 */

get_header(); ?>

	<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

	<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>

		<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

			<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
				<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
				<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></small>

				<div class="entry">
					<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry &raquo;'); ?>
				</div>

				<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '<br />'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments &#187;', '1 Comment &#187;', '% Comments &#187;'); ?></p>
			</div>

		<?php endwhile; ?>

		<div class="navigation">
			<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link('&laquo; Older Entries') ?></div>
			<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link('Newer Entries &raquo;') ?></div>
		</div>

	<?php else : ?>

		<h2 class="center">Not Found</h2>
		<p class="center">Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.</p>
		<?php get_search_form(); ?>

	<?php endif; ?>

	</div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Now all you have to do is save the file and when you go to one of your category pages it will now use this file instead of archive.php. To customize, just edit category.php to your liking. If you are using my Show Every Post On Your Category Page tip don’t forget to edit it accordingly! Also, if you have a customized theme you can just copy your entire index.php file in your themes folder into the new category.php.