Hello Jen, I just stumbled across your blog today and started digging through your archives and came across this post and figured I’d let you know that WordPress actually has a built in method for using category templates. It’s called Template Hierarchy, which means WordPress will actually search for very specific templates and gradually fall back to more general templates before it finally decides to use index.php.
So instead of using Page Templates, you could create a category-3.php, category-4.php, and category.php and get rid of the code above. Check out Template Hierarchy and Category Templates in the WordPress Codex for more info. Keep up the great blogging!
]]>