User Guide

Category Pages in eeSiteKit

eeSiteKit fully harnesses ExpressionEngine’s native categories system, empowering your content publishers to create and delete site “pages”, position pages in drop-down and sub-navigation menus, add and remove Channel Landing Pages, and all this from the Publish/Edit pages of EE’s control panel.

Category Pages are the Heart of eeSiteKit’s Navigation and Content Structure

eeSiteKit’s Category Pages provide a content display layer between the Home or optional Landing Pages, and the Single Entry Pages within your website.

Home Page >> Landing Page >> Category Page >> Single Entry Page

Creating A New Category Page: To add a Category Page, you will be creating a new category within a Category Group assigned to the Channel where you want the new Category Page.

Categories may be created and managed in the Category Management area of the control panel here:

Site Name ›  Admin ›  Channel Administration ›  Category Groups

If you will be setting up all your Category Pages at once, then the Category Management area of the control panel may be most efficient. However, we think you’ll find that creating, positioning, editing and deleting categories from the “Edit Categories” link within the Categories tab of the Publish/Edit page is the preferred location by many content publishers. The following instructions are based on creating a Category Page from the Publish/Edit page in EE’s control panel.

  1. Click on the “Publish” tab and select the Channel where you would like your new Category Page to appear.
  2. You may create your Category Page’s first entry now or just set up the new Category Page and add the content later. Remember that eeSiteKit will not display the new Category Page in the website’s navigation until there is content assigned to the new category, so if you need to see the new page in your site right now, you may want to create a temporary entry.
  3. Click on the smaller “Categories” tab and once the tab has loaded you should see a blue “Edit Categories” link at the bottom. (If you don’t see the link, your member group may not have the right permissions to edit Categories from the Publish/Edit page yet).
  4. Click on the “Edit Categories” link and if your browser prompts you, tell it to allow pop-up windows.
  5. Once your pop-up window has opened, click on the big green tab “Create a New Category”
  6. Category Name: What you key in for the Category Name will be used in your site’s navigation for the links to your Category Page. The Category URL Title that EE will create for you will be used in segment_2 of your site’s URIs when someone has navigated to your new Category Page. For example, this page’s Category Name is “Category Pages” and its Category URL Title is “category-pages”.
  7. If your new Category Page will be a sub-category, then use the “Category Parent” menu near the bottom of the pop-up window to assign it to a parent category.
  8. Click Submit
  9. When the pop-up window reloads, you may use the blue positioning arrows to move your new category up or down. Its position in this list will be reproduced by eeSiteKit in your website’s drop-down menus and sub-navigation.
  10. Click Close Window and Update Categories in PUBLISH Page
  11. If you are ready to publish to the new Category Page, you must select your new category (click on it to highlight it).
  12. Finally, click on the Submit/Update button in the Publish/Edit page.

You must assign an entry to a category in eeSiteKit before that entry will be added to a Category Page in your site. This step is an easy one to forget if you are new to publishing this way in ExpressionEngine. If you are training others to publish in a site you are developing with eeStieKit, we recommend you make sure they note this important step.

There is also a free extension from our friends at Designchuchi that will help remind you of this step. While not required, some do find the extension helpful.