hm yes, i think i was trying to do it in a taxonomy archive, which obviously wouldn't work. i am on discover-wp and do consult with it extensively before asking questions!
so i have this page – http://mommysplurge.com/subscription-boxes-list/ – i think you should be able to tell that it uses the classifieds categories method. i then used the same method with a different view and then a view inside of it to generate a link to all the posts (this is ugly as sin right now and i actually need to do what i do on the sub-pages, for search purposes, but i also need to move to a VPS because types/views has stretched the limits of my shared hosting memory! so i have that part covered, i think. what i would ALSO like to do on _this_ list is show the subcategories with the posts in the proper order – that is, the posts that are inside a SUB taxonomy should not be shown in the main list like they are now. is that at all possible? (to avoid duplication). i tried throwing my directory lists view back into the directory lists view (essentially the same thing as classifieds categories view, but it currently displays a view like the magazine one you showed me in order to show the posts), but it kind of just hung, i don't think it was happy for me to do that. so that is my first question. this page is just a page with the views inserted via shortcode.
the second thing i would like to do is:
show the taxonomy archive, unpaginated (i have not been able to achieve with several different functions attempting it!), with the list of posts in the taxonomy, a list of sub-taxonomies, and a block of featured items just like there is on the home page of the classifieds website.
perhaps you can help me alter the classifieds website to achieve the functionality that i want. i think it is fairly close to what's going on there now. I *do* have pre-existing pages that i can use instead of the taxonomy archives if need be. as it is now i need to redirect them. i am not tied to a completely dynamic structure because i would not like to add any more top level categories. so that is also a possibility for the category pages. point me in the right direction to get started? thanks for your assistance.