How to Easily Create Custom Category Pages in WordPress

WordPress category pages are the pages that list all the posts on your blog from a particular category. These pages give your readers a way to view all the posts on a certain topic or category in one place.

However, depending on your chosen WordPress theme, these category pages don’t often include any original or useful information about the posts they contain.

While it’s possible to edit the theme files in use on your website to create your own custom category pages, the free Enhanced Category Pages plugin gives you an easier way to customize and add your own content to these pages, effectively turning them into landing pages for the individual topics you cover on your blog.

The advantages of doing this are that those category archive pages are now much more informative to your readers. By adding additional content, you can also increase the chances of those pages ranking in the search engines, just like the regular posts and pages on your blog. This, in turn, increases the visibility of your content, helping to bring more visitors to your website.

If you like the idea of adding custom content to your category pages by using the WordPress editor, then read on for our guide to the Enhanced Category Pages plugin.

How to Use Enhanced Category Pages on Your Website

Because Enhanced Category Pages is 100% free and listed at WordPress.org, you can install it directly from your WordPress dashboard. Just head to Plugins → Add New and search for “Enhanced Category Pages”.

enhanced category pages wordpress plugin

Once you’ve installed it, make sure to activate the plugin.

Creating Your Custom WordPress Category Pages

Enhanced Category Pages works by letting you edit your category pages with all of the same WordPress Editor options you have when writing posts or pages.

It’s super easy to use – assuming you’ve got the plugin activated, you can access the editor by going to Posts → Categories. Then, hover over your desired category and choose the Enhanced Edit option:

Custom Category Pages WordPress

Once you click on Enhanced Edit, you’ll see what looks like the normal WordPress Editor:

Any content that you add here will go straight to your custom category pages.

Let’s run through a quick example to see how it works.

Here’s what my default category archive page looks like using the Twenty Seventeen theme:

To spruce up my category page, all I need to do is add some text and an image in the Enhanced Category Pages interface:

Then, on the front-end, my category page will look like this:

The really cool part? If you’re using a page builder like Visual Composer, you can actually build your custom category page content using Visual Composer. Or, you can always use shortcodes to style your content.

And you can also use Enhanced Category Pages to create custom WooCommerce product category pages if you’re running an eCommerce store.

Just one quick note – because Enhanced Category Pages is basically using a custom post type to insert content, you need to make sure to turn off commenting in the Enhanced Edits interface so that you don’t allow comments on your category pages. Just scroll down until you see the Discussion box and uncheck Allow comments:

And that’s it! If you’re already familiar with the basic WordPress Editor, you’ll have no problem using Enhanced Category Pages.

Custom Category Pages in WordPress

That’s pretty much all you need to do to add your own content to your category archive pages to make them more useful to your readers.

If you want to ensure that your custom category pages load quickly, quality Managed WordPress Hosting can keep your site running blazing fast.

And if you have any questions about this plugin, or working with WordPress in general, please leave a comment below.

New Posts in your inbox

  1. Hi, I am fairly new to wordpress but am just getting the hang of it now. I want to add categories to my pages but I don’t have any plug in options? the only thing i can see is the wdigets however they have to be the same for every page?

    where did you locate the plug ins, did you have to download something to use it?

    thanks for any help you can provide 🙂

  2. I added a category page but my page shows a big white box above all the posts with the word Edit in it. I’ve turned off commenting but it looks almost like a comment box. My page background is black so it sticks out like a sore thumb! I’ve put the category page in the website box below.

  3. A great plugin Joe! Thank you for sharing.
    Can you please help me on the managing the sidebars of the categories? How can I edit/remove the sidebars for the category pages?
    Thank you!

  4. Hi Joe, I’ve followed the instructions but the text I’m entering just isn’t showing anywhere. Do you have any idea as to why that might be please? Thank you!

  5. Hi, I’ve added this plugin but my title is now showing twice on the page. I’ve tried editing the value of the wptr_hide_title field but it reverts back each time? What can I do to stop it showing twice?

  6. Hi, I just activated the plugin but when i go on enhanced edit, no matter what I add in the text editor it is not displayed then on my category page. Also I noticed lots of error in the description section like those:
    Notice: Trying to get property of non-object in /home/clients/shining/prod/veterinairesgarde/wp-content/plugins/enhanced-category-pages/classes/ecp/Enhanced_Category.php on line 143

    Notice: Undefined offset: 0 in /home/clients/shining/prod/veterinairesgarde/wp-content/plugins/enhanced-category-pages/classes/ecp/Enhanced_Category.php on line 232

    is the plugin work with beaver builder?
    thanks for your help!

  7. Hi Joe,
    Recently I need to optimize my category page for better SEO.
    But this plugins’s last commit was 3 years ago, do you think it still safe to use this?
    And does this plugin work with Woocommerce?
    Thank you very much

  8. thanks for sharing this, i’ll have to give it a play around when I have a few extra minutes to help me better style my podcast feeds. With catagory podcasting from my podcast host and this tool one should be able to create a very powerful network site, and add opt-in boxes for each catagory as well as an application for example if he wanted to take applications for one of his shows.
    thanks again.
    Michael
    Host of the Your Own Pay Podcast Network

  9. Hi Joe! I wanna customize the category page but when i click the enhanced edit, it just shows that “Sorry, you are not allowed to edit posts in this post type.”
    Is there any solution to it?

  10. Hi!
    I’m considering trying this, it looks like a great option but my main question was how to remove the word ‘category’ from in front. I don’t think it’s needed. Any ideas?
    Thank you

  11. Hi Joe… what if i want a make a post and have it appear in only one category …is this possible? By this i mean i want the post to appear on the selected category only and not the default category a well

  12. Hi, can anyone tell me, how I can change readers’ blog views on Categories view? In my site, I am not getting this Enhanced edit option.

  13. I use the Category Editor plugin that is also free and is maintained. This plugin has not been updated in over 4 years.
    Category Editor also has a free version that can be downloaded from your WordPress dashboard. The other benefit of Category Editor is that it offers the option to build an image-based menu of categories with a shortcode.
    The paid version has other options as well which are good for SEO and visitor experience

  14. This looks good, but I have a question. How can I make the content appear at the bottom of the page and the gallery images in the category remain at the top? Thank you

  15. It’s 4 years old, and not tested with the latest WordPress version. Upgrade the plugin because it’s looks good!

  16. Hi guys, it seems the plugin ‘Enhanced Category Pages’ plugin no longer exists. Please suggest any alternative plugins.

  17. Do you know how I can show my post dates under the posts on my category page? It only shows the title. My theme told me that I would have to customize the theme, so they won’t help me unless I pay them. I’m sure it must be easy. Like a short code to insert somewhere, maybe in the category index area? Any advise would be so appreciated!