Dabliu Pee on "Custom Category Archive Pages"

I've developed a site with a lot of post categories. I need to display some categories differently. Most will be a grid with img etc. but for the category LINKS, they will just be a list of post titles.

I have LINKS -> Support, LINKS -> Resources etc. so many child categories of LINKS.

I copied category.php to category-links.php and changed ONLY the layout, not the loop. It seemed to work, but while I got NEXT and PREVIOUS buttons (so it seemed to find posts and page thru them) no posts were displayed on the screen. Even when I only copied the file and made no changes, it would not actually display anything.

What is the right way to create a custom 'category-links' so that it applies to the root LINKS, and to all children of that category?

Thanks