creating custom WP category pages

I'm looking to edit what people see when they click a category link (the link that posts are a part of). By default, if you click a category link - it will just display all of the posts within it. I want to edit that behavior, and include static text at the top.

I searched the net and saw this, but I'm confused as to what it's referring to - it seems to be explaining how to add templates to your theme...or am I wrong?

I also want to do this to WP tags (customize the page that shows up when someone clicks a tag)

 

category templates allow you can change the site layout on a per category basis.

http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/08/04/how-to-manipulate-category-templates/

 

Thanks! Now I see - this sentence was a big help:

Does anyone think it would be a bad idea to 301 redirect categories to pages? For instance, if I want "mysite.com/categories/apples" redirected to a manually created page "mysite.com/apples"?

 

why not just create that page and add the link into the sidebar?

 

the main reason I had that idea was because my theme has WP Breadcrumbs built in. It creates breadcrumbs based on categories, which I found to be annoying...so, all of the links look like mysite.com/category/whatever/thisarticle, when I really wanted them to be mysite.com/whatever/thisarticle