Two quick wordpress questions

Just two quick wordpress questions...

Ok, I have set up the static homepage. Now what I want is a way to just show the titles of my recent posts on the home page and not the full post. How do I do this? Is there a plugin?

Second question, I want to do the same thing for the categories. At the moment, when you click on say the categoryx link, the urls are sitex/categories/categoryx. What I want is for the url to be sitex/categoryx. Then on this page I want to display just the headers to the recent posts in this category. Again how?

I have spent all day, customizing the theme and tweaking certain things in it. Just cant figure this last step out. Once I get this I just need to change the css for IE6 and Im golden. Woohoo.

 

I can't answer your first question because it depends on the theme and how much tweaking you know how to do with the code. You can set in the Admin Panel Reading Full Text or Summary.

The answer to your second question is to use a custom permalinks structure.

/%postname%/ should do most of what you want.

You can also use /%postname%.html and pick any extension you want to display... htm html php or whatever.

 

answer for the second question

actually i think that you are trying to remove the category base..
To do that in the permalinks option use . in the category base option.
and as internetmarketingiq the first question depends on the theme..

 

For your first question.... it really depends on your theme but generally this will work
Put the code below in your functions.php file...

  if(is_home()) :
   add_action('the_content','wp_homepage_remove_content');
  endif;
  function wp_homepage_remove_content($content){
   $content = '';
   return '';
  }

Code (markup):

don't forget to enclose above code above in PHP tags

 

If you don't want the post on the homepage, go to your index.php or home.php and remove:

<?php the_content(); ?>

Code (markup):

 

On the first line of the post, before the first sentence, insert the read more break. When people view your home page, they should see the article title and the read more link.

It looks like most of the already mentioned options will work. I just wanted to recommend something that did not require editing the wordpress code.