Steps to Add a New Trip to the Site – Our Trips Around The World

How to Add a New Trip to the Site

This site supports documenting independent trips, each with its own blog, photos, and custom navigation. Several plugins work together to make this possible.

Required Plugins

Conditional Menus – Display different menus based on pages or categories.
Post Order By Category – Allows changing post order on a per-category basis.
Folders – Organizes media, pages, and posts into folders.

Step 1: Create Categories

Add a top-level category for the trip (e.g., Greek Isles Trip).
Under it, add categories for each city you plan to visit.
Add a "Pre-Trip (Next Trip)" category with a unique slug (e.g., pretrip-greek2025).
Add a Food category with a unique slug (e.g., food-greek2025).

Step 2: Create the Trip Page

Create a static page that introduces and summarizes the trip.

Step 3: Create a Custom Menu

Go to Appearance → Menus and create a new menu named after the trip.

Add the following menu items:

Home → links to the Trip Page
Blog → links to the top-level category for the trip
Cities → add one menu item for each city category
Food on the Trip → links to the Food category for the trip

Step 4: Add to the “All the Blogs” Menu

Edit the primary All the Blogs menu.
Add the new Trip Page as a sub-item.
Add the trip date to the Navigation Label.
Move this menu item to the top of the list.

Step 5: Configure the Conditional Menu

Go to Appearance → Menus → Manage Locations.

In the Trip Menu location, click + Conditional Menu, then choose the menu you just created.
Click + Conditions, then:
- Under Pages, select the Trip Page.
- Under Category, select:
  - The top-level trip category
  - Each city category
  - The Food category

Important Notes:

You must first create at least one post using each category, or the category won’t appear in the list.
After saving, wait a few minutes for the menu to take effect.

Step 6: Set Post Order (Using Post Order By Category)

Before the trip: Edit the top-level trip category → set post order to Oldest First.
After the trip: Change the post order to Newest First.

Step 7: Organize Media (Using Folders Plugin)

In the Media Library, do one of the following:
- Create a single folder for the trip (e.g., Greek2025), and put all images there.
- OR create folders per city (e.g., grk-ath, grk-sant).

Also:

In Folders → Posts and Pages, create a folder for the trip.
Move the Trip Page and any associated posts into that folder.

Additional Notes (October 2026)

Learned while setting up the South America 2026 trip. These add to the steps above.

Category web addresses (slugs)

Give the trip’s top-level category a neutral slug that never needs to change, e.g. south-america-2026. The name visitors see can be changed at any time; the slug is part of every post’s web address, so don’t change it once posts exist.
If a city already has a category from an earlier trip, keep the plain name and add the year to the slug, e.g. Buenos Aires → buenos-aires-2026, Madrid → madrid-2026. A city that is new to the site gets the plain slug.
For a trip across several countries, add a category for each country under the trip, with that country’s cities under it (e.g. Argentina → Buenos Aires, Puerto Iguazú).

Trip menu layout

Home (the Trip Page), The Blog (the top-level category), then each country with its cities as sub-items.
Last, a More Stuff … item (a Custom Link with no URL) with these sub-items: Pre Trip, Food, the trip’s Videos page (after the trip), See All Our Trips (the site’s home address) and Admin Access (the login page).

“All the Blogs” menu

Trips are grouped under year headings (2026, 2025, …). Add the Trip Page under its year heading, at the top of that year, labeled “Trip Name – Mon YYYY”. Add a new year heading when a new year starts.

Conditional Menu

Under the Category tab, tick every category of the trip, including the top-level category. This shows the trip menu on the category pages.
Under the Has Term tab → Categories, tick the same categories again. This shows the trip menu on each post. Without it, posts show the site’s default menu. The Northern Italy trip was missing this, and was fixed in October 2026.
Under Pages, tick the Trip Page (and the Videos page once it exists).
The current version of the plugin lists every category, so you no longer need to write a post in a category before you can select it.
Changes can take up to an hour to show for visitors, because Network Solutions keeps a copy of each page for an hour.

Media folders

Name them with the trip and year, e.g. SA-2026-Rio, so they’re clearly separate from earlier trips to the same place.

After the trip

Change the top-level category’s post order to Newest First (Step 6).
In Appearance → Header Links, assign the trip’s new header pictures to the trip and city, so the header links and captions work.
Add a “Trip Videos” page under the Trip Page, add it to More Stuff … and tick it in the Conditional Menu.

That’s it! Your new trip is now fully integrated into the site structure.

Original version:

This site attempts to support independent trips with associated blogs for the cities for that trip. That is accomplished through the Conditional Menus plug-in that allows posts and pages to display a different menu based on Categories etc. This page will detail the steps necessary to add a new trip to the site and steps to take when you are on the trip and when you finish the trip.

The steps assume the following plugins are installed:

The Conditional Menus plug-in
The Post Order By Category plug-in
The Folders plug-in

Build the Categories for the trip
- Add a top level Category with the trip name
- Under that Category add all the cities you will visit
- Add a “Pre-Trip (Next Trip)” Category with a unique slug for this trip
- Add a Food Category with a unique slug for this trip
Create a static Trip Page that will contain a summary of the trip
Create a Menu named “Trip Name” with the following:
- A Home item that points to the Trip Page
- A Blog item that will point to high level category for the trip
- A series of additional menus for each city category as appropriate
- The last item should be “Food on the trip” that points to the unique food Category for this trip
Add a sub-item to the “All the Blogs” primary menu
1. Trip page (Add the trip date to the Navigation Label)
2. Put the Menu Item at the top of the list
Using the Conditional Menus plug-in option to “Manage Locations” for The Trip menu:
- Select “+Conditional Menu” and select the name of the new “Trip Name” menu
- Select “+Conditions” and go to the Pages tab
- Select “Has Term” and select the top level name of the trip (i.e. “The Greek Isles Trip” or “Mexico City”
  - Select the page the The Trip page
- Then select the Category tag and select all the associated Categories
- Make sure to also select the Top level Category for that trip and the Food Category for that trip
- These Category selections are finicky, so make sure they are correct after saving.
- IMPORTANT NOTES: After making a change to a conditional menu, wait a few minutes before you will see the effect. Also, You need to create a post with the categories in it before it will show up in the conditional categories list.
The next steps rely on the Post Order By Category Plug-in
- Before the trip edit the top level Category and select “Oldest” for Post Order
- After the trip edit the top level Category and select “Newest” for Post Order
Using the Folders Plug-in, in the Media section, do *either* of the two approaches:
- Create a Media Folder for the whole trip. This is where all the images for that trip are located.
- Create Media Folders named xxx-city, where xxx is a short 3 letters for the trip name. This is where the images for that city on that trip will be located.
Create a Folder in the Posts and Page sections (if needed) that will contain associated pages and posts for The Trip
1. Move the “The Next Trip” Page into this new folder