Anyone using Wordpress can help me with layout plz?

[BustyDeLaGhetto]

I've started a blog on Wordpress but it needs streamlining as at the moment the posts are quite diverse.

I feel it would make it more user friendly to have clickable categories in the right hand menu to catergorise posts by theme so that readers can go directly to posts they are interested in.

There is a 'Category' tab in the Appearance menu but it starts talking about 'Orphans', 'Parent' and 'Child' themes and I have NOT THE FOGGIEST idea what is going on. Somehow I've managed to put up two categories with drop down menus which isn't what I wanted to do and have no idea how to split them up.

Is this gibberish to you too?

Orphans - a stand alone category
Parent - a category with sub-categories
Child - a sub-category under a parent

Not sure what you mean by 2 categories with drop down menus.

Ah, okay. What I have done is put in a Parent category and it has listed everything else in it's sub headings. So rather than seperate categories for say, Pictures of Kittens and Pictures of my Mum it just has Pictures of Kittens and when you click on that all the other categories drop down from it as sub-headings. So I need to orphan them all.

Brilliant, will let you know if it works Tee, that was much more straightforward. You ought to write their blurb for them you know, I found it all very confusing.

No problem. Glad to help.

Arrrrgh. No. I just created four new categories under which to list my (thankfully few) posts and there are still the two original and unwanted category menus on the homepage despite the fact that I deleted them before creating new ones.

Can you see them, on the right hand side? One says Wiffle and one says Homemade.

theluckyapple.wordpress.com/

Shall I punch my computer?

If you select Homemade the drop down appears - those names are the actual categories I wanted, IYSWIM.

Okay I see what you've done.

You've titled the drop down box, Wiffle is the title of your Archive Widget and Homemade is the title of your category Widget.

Go to your widgets page and find where the Category Widget is. Click the arrow on the right hand side and it should open up. Delete what you have typed in the title box, you don't need to put a title, unless you want to.

WP will automatically put any categories you create into the drop down, you just have to tell it, when you create the category, if it's Parent, Child or Orphan.

Clear?

Tee YOU ARE A GENIUS. THANK YOU.

All resolved, I think. I do wish all instructions were as clear as yours!