Category pages just went from the least flexible to the most flexible page type ever! Custom category pages are just the beginning of a new way of doing things on World Anvil and I cannot be more excited about what this will mean for our suite of worldbuilding tools!

What are custom category pages

Category pages were always meant to be a way to clearly separate your content into sections. One of the most common issues had what that they wanted to have the functionality and richness of content/design articles had. This was partially fixed with the introduction of parent articles but… Parent articles were never meant to be used as categories.

The custom category pages allow you to completely redesign the way the page looks. Using the Design and Content tabs you will be able to add a lot of custom content AND choose where this content appears.

Custom Categories Drag and Drop

The organization of the structure is very simple, all you need to do is go to the Design tab and use the Drag and Drop functionality to place them where you want. If you don’t want to use one of the sections, just drag it to the “Unused sections” box, you can always drag them back out if you want!

How can you use them

Custom categories can do so much more than the simple implementation. Because of the extra content, they can be used not only to showcase the contents of the category but they can serve you as introductory articles to sections. They can be used to give context and to enrich the experience of your readers. Some people are using them as a way to show their work during competitions and others to write.

Create a Primer for your Party

Custom Category as a player’s handbook by Roger Davis in The World of Tavomia

A category page is a perfect place to organize information from all over a place thematically. That means that you can use the articles under this category, as your core but also provide links to your players to other important articles, maps etc, not in this category but important for the campaign.

Create Information Hubs

Challenges WorldAnvil in Aubekaï

As a way to show articles in a completely custom way, in the form of an archive by Aubekai (hellay)

Custom categories can be a great way to create “hubs” for your world structure. Using the custom content you get more functionality that the articles currently have in terms of layout and . you can use them to inject links to articles, actual content or even links to maps.

Use them as Monetization Tools

Use custom categories to give context by Amy Winters-Voss in Liminal Chronicles

In terms of monetization, you can use the custom content to link to your stores or Patreon or even DM’s guild page

Who can use them

Since the fall under the remit of advanced customization, the Custom Categories, as well as the Custom World Homepage, are both Grandmaster+ features. There is no plan for those trickle down just yet, BUT the technology and changes used on them WILL allow for a lot of great stuff for all guild members, read below!

What’s coming up next

Drag’n’Drop on the homepage

The same drag and drop used in categories will be used soon to bring the same freedom to the homepage, I know that after the recent update many of you wished that it would be easier!

Cleanup of the Edit Category page

Brandon (Ademal) created for me a beautiful list of suggestions about making the category edit page cleaner and simpler so I will be doing those soon

The Table of Contents used in the homepage as the ToC for categories

The new style of Table of contents will be used in the categories page as well for everyone which means that you will be able to see your articles in the ToC as well

Global Announcements/Content block

This is loosely related but important, all guild members will get a new feature soon that will allow you to have a piece of content that will appear in every single article and category in your world. I will try this by adding it on the sidebar of the articles with a sidebar and we will see how it goes

Testing technology for future use in articles

This is highly experimental, but I know that many of you asked for the chance to be able to move things around in your articles. I am doing some experiments now on that and on the ability to quickly hide/show to people other than the writer pieces of the content. Not easy stuff but I am on it.

Special Categories / Sections

I have seen many of you using articles as a way to “blog” and give “development updates” I want to find ways of making this easier for you and to provide a way for you to write blog-style content in your worlds