Kadence Elements (Kadence PRO) on WordPress Custom Category Pages

If you run a WordPress website, you’re likely familiar with how WordPress automatically organizes your posts into categories. These category pages display your posts in sequential order but come with a limitation: their appearance is largely fixed, offering little room for customization unless you’re willing to mess with some PHP coding.

This is actually what I used to do back in the day before Kadence and Gutenberg. The coding was written in PHP files nestled inside the theme folder itself. While I could edit it easily myself, this approach didn’t give my theme users the flexibility to customize them on their own.

Kadence Pro allows you to customize, edit, arrange, and place any components in your blog category pages directly in the Gutenberg page editor. This means you don’t need to wrestle with coding to achieve this, nor do you need to use any source code editor. You can insert custom-designed sections, or “elements,” into any part of your category pages. Whether it’s a stylish header, an engaging call-to-action, or a unique footer, and even insert any available sections easily within a few clicks from the Design Library. This process is similar to how you would manage other pages or posts on your site, but now it extends to category pages as well.

Take a look at Wanderlust’s default category page, for example. With the basic setup, you will be able to see the category title, a little description, and the posts that fall under that category. Sometimes, you can also add a sidebar. That’s it.

Now, take a look at Wanderlust’s custom category page that uses Kadence Elements (Kadence Pro). You can still see the category title, description, and featured image, along with other elements. You’ll notice that the posts falling under the specific category are sandwiched between a custom header area and a custom footer area.

The evolution from PHP tweaks to using Kadence Pro represents a significant leap forward in website design flexibility and user-friendliness. With Kadence Pro, the power to create and customize category pages becomes much less of a hassle, allowing for a more personalized and dynamic user experience. This not only enhances the visual appeal of your site but also offers a practical way to engage visitors, encouraging them to explore more content and stay longer on your website.