Copied from the WordPress developer documentation on ‘Template Hierachy’, the blog template is displayed using the following template file rules:
If your blog is at http://example.com/blog/ and a visitor clicks on a
link to a category page such as
http://example.com/blog/category/your-cat/, WordPress looks for a
template file in the current theme’s directory that matches the
category’s ID to generate the correct page. More specifically,
WordPress follows this procedure:Looks for a template file in the current theme’s directory that
matches the category’s slug. If the category slug is “unicorns,” then
WordPress looks for a template file named category-unicorns.php.
- If category-unicorns.php is missing and the category’s ID is 4, WordPress looks for a template file named category-4.php.
- If category-4.php is missing, WordPress will look for a generic category template file, category.php.
- If category.php does not exist, WordPress will look for a generic
archive template, archive.php.- If archive.php is also missing, WordPress will fall back to the main
theme template file, index.php.
You can also see a visual representation of the template hierarchy below:
