Question

Is it possible to display a different theme based on whatever category you’re in?

For example:

blog.example.com/category/foo -> style1.
blog.example.com/category/bar -> style2.

A Google search brought up this page, and he recommends doing this in single.php:

$post = $wp_query->post;
if ( in_category(5) ) {
    include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/style1.php');
} else {
    include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/style2.php');
}

Is this the way to go?

Answer 1

You shouldn’t really be using include for this. WordPress has an amazing get_template_part function just for these situations. It has a built-in fallback mechanism, and integrates nicely with your theme:

$categories = get_the_category();

get_template_part('for-category', $categories[0]->slug);

Then, just name your files with the category slug:

blog.example.com/category/foo -> for-category-foo.php
blog.example.com/category/bar -> for-category-bar.php

Remember to also have a default for-category.php file, so that you can fallback to that if you don’t have a custom file for the current category.