WebspaceWorks Articles/News

Wordpress plugin: Fold Category List finally out of beta!

This plugin has just been bumped to v1.12, applying a similar patch to that made on Fold Page List to provide a permanent fix for possible warning messages arising from array manipulation by the plugin.

It’s been a long time coming,but Fold Category List has finally reached version 1.0 (release) status with a feature upgrade that extends the use of two standard arguments in order to better handle empty categories and the display of post-counts in the category navigation list.

Empty categories

By default Wordpress does not include empty categories within its displayed category list. While this might make sense if there are no sub-categories, or if any sub-categories are also empty, it causes problems in cases where the sub-categories themselves contain posts, but where the parents do not. In these situations the entire sub-navigation would be rendered unreachable because the parent category has no posts directly linked to it.

Wordpress allows the presentation of empty categories to be switched on by setting the hide_empty argument to ‘0’(zero or ‘false’), but this again can then cause entire hierarchies to become visible, even if the number of posts in the entire hierarchy is zero. Why display an empty hierarchy?

Cumulative (or running) counts and selective display of empty categories

What is needed is a means of tracking the total number of posts under a parent category and all its child categories. Posts need be registered with the sub-category that is most relevant, but the parent category needs to be displayed only if it, or one of its child categories has at least 1 post attached.

Fold Category List v1.0 achieves this by extending the use of the hide_empty standard argument. Under the plugin this may now take one of three values:

• 1 (true): Default—All categories with no posts directly attached will be excluded from the category list
• 0 (false): All categories, whether empty or not, will be included in the list
• 2: Fold Category List only—Categories will be included in the list if they, or their children have at least one attached post.

Category post-counts

In the category navigation list Wordpress can display the number of posts a category has directly attached to it, but no indication of what the total post count might be from any child categories, unless those posts are also attached to the parent category.

In introducing the running (cumulative) count as a means of solving the issue of selective display of empty categories, it now becomes possible to display a cumulative count of posts for a category and all its child categories within a folded category listing.

Displaying cumulative post-counts in the category list

As above, switching the category list to display a cumulative, rather than a direct count of attached posts is achieved through an extension of one of the standard arguments. The optioncount argument can now take three possible values:

• 0 (false): Default—Do not show the post count as part of the category list
• 1 (true): Show a count of how many posts are directly attached to the category
• 2: Fold Category List only—Show the cumulative count of posts attached to the category itself, plus those attached to any child categories underneath it.

Wordpress 2.1 compatibility

The Fold Category List plugin remains fully compatible with the current release version of Wordpress (v2.1).

Details and download

For full details and a link to the download archive are available on the Fold Category List support page.