Categories vs Links vs Link Categories

cphine
(@cphine)

16 years, 9 months ago

Allow me to insert my specific questions into a description of what I am attempting to achieve:

On my site, I have in the sidebar a location for “Categories” and a location for “Blogroll” ie “Links”.

I want to have three primary categories in the category section labeled “Issues”, “Contributors”, and “Radio Stations”. Under each of these would be the sub-categories as necessary…ie different issues, contributor names, and radio station names.

Question 1: Is there a way to make these main categories “collapseable”? I will have a large number of subcategories and limiting it to the three major ones by default would really clean up the main page.

Under “Blogroll”, I wish to have to two categories. One for “Radio Stations” and one for “friends”.

Question 2: Thusfar, I have been able to assign links to the appropriate categories, but this in no way changes the way they appear on the front page. In fact, I don’t even understand why links would be put into categories if they won’t appear as “parent/child”.

Question 3: Assuming I can end up actually using categories for links, would having “radio stations” in both “categories” and “blogroll” be redundant? I want links to the stations, but I also want to categorize posts by radio station. Do I need to enter them all twice? One in post categories and once in links?

I hope that makes sense. Thanks in advance for any help. I’ve seen other’s with similar issues, but the wordpress instructions appear to be for early versions and I’m thinking they changed how categories and links worked.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

moshu
(@moshu)

16 years, 9 months ago

Wow! Too many questions for one topic 🙂

Let’s try to deal with some of them.

1. Search for a plugin “fold categories” or somethinglike that

2. Nothing is perfect… Iguess. You mean the “link-categories” do not appear in a hierarchical way?
Well, I can see the logic in your question, although if I put in this way: I have 5 links under Blogroll and they display with the cat title

Blogroll
link1
link2
link3
link4
link5

… now where should the sub-roll category and its links go to express the parent/child relationship?

3. I guess you misunderstand something. Blogroll is NOT the echivalent of Categories. It is the echivalent of Uncategorized = the default link category!
And no, once a category is created you can use it either for posts or links… or for both.

Thread Starter cphine
(@cphine)

16 years, 9 months ago

Thank you for responding. Yes, too many questions at once, but all sort of related. 🙂 The terminology is also killing me.

1: I will search for a plugin. I didn’t know if it would be easier to do it that way or if it was a function capability I was missing in the basic core. Thanks.

2: My goal for Links would be to have it appear this way:
*Blogroll* – That’s the header
Radio Stations
—radio station link 1
—radio station link 2
—radio station link 3
Friends
—friends link 1
—friends link 2
—friends link 3
ETC.

3: I phrased this question horribly…I’ll try again in a second.
However, in your post you said that “once a category is created you can use it either for posts or links…or both.”
Actually, I’ve found that if I create a category, and assign a post to that category, it is no longer available as a link category. The reverse is also true.
To rephrase the question:
My posts will be given three categories…contributor, issue, and radio station.
Since I also desire to have links to all the radio stations, do I need to both create every station as a category AND a Link, or once I have them under links can I assign a link to a post and thus only have to enter all the stations once. grrr. sometimes I just want to pick up a phone! I hope that makes more sense.

Cheers for helping,
Christian

ccoupe
(@ccoupe)

16 years, 9 months ago

I’m no good with theme issues so bear that in mind. Depending on your version of Wordpess, the handling of the Blogroll/Links changed “just a bit” in the admin screens and your theme may have to adjust for that change. In admin panels the blogroll is managed like as a category but the theme can display them as two different sidebar items. Very confusing and I can’t say I understand but it’s the first thing you “adjust too”. They only appear to be different.

You can have subcategories, and the text and links are dependent on you or your theme putting in the right characters. The blogroll (Links) is just a category that was treated specially by the core code or themes and not as special anymore. I gave up on the blogroll for that and reasons of “does anyone care”

Thread Starter cphine
(@cphine)

16 years, 9 months ago

Thanks for the input ccoupe.
I’m using version 2.1.3 and I believe that my theme (the popular iblue) was written for it.
I see what you’re saying about it possibly being the themes fault and that “blogroll” really is just a “category” being given special treatment.
I just can’t figure out the logic behind creating a category if then I have to decide if it is a “post category” or a “link category”. Once I choose, the category disappears in the other. There must be some differentiation there on a core level. Plus, a “normal” category doesn’t give you the option to make it a link, or href it somewhere.
This was all a little off topic from the original question.
Regarding “does anyone care”, I do only from the standpoint that I want links to other sites on my site…both due to friends and due to the actual purpose of the site.

ccoupe
(@ccoupe)

16 years, 9 months ago

Indeed, there is mystery in the logic. One can figure out the logic or we can just use what we are given. As I remember, in 2.1.3, blogroll and categories actually were two different things (blogroll was more like a static page with an editor). You can’t post to a blogroll because it’s not a category. 2.2 kind of merged them all which is more like what you want. Annoyed me but might be just what you want.

Most of my previous explanation above was for 2.2. I’m not saying 2.2 is the answer to all your problems, or without it’s own problems but it will get you closer to your goal.

Thread Starter cphine
(@cphine)

16 years, 9 months ago

I think the “merge” you are refering to was included in 2.1.3.

I have “sucessfully” gotten the first part of my question solved. The folding categories plugin appears to work…the count of posts gets a little off, and I need to categorize a post by clicking the entire hierachy and not just it’s final destination, but it works good enough for me.

My remaining question is simply this, reposted from above:

2: My goal for Links would be to have it appear this way:
*Blogroll* – That’s the header
Radio Stations (*That’s a link category)
—radio station link 1
—radio station link 2
—radio station link 3
Friends (*That’s another link category)
—friends link 1
—friends link 2
—friends link 3
ETC.
At this point I don’t care if it collapses or not!
cheers,
Christian

ccoupe
(@ccoupe)

16 years, 9 months ago

Somehow i’m missing the issue. If 2.1.3 and 2.2 merged Blogroll and Cateories (reasonable people can disagree on that), Then, and only if then, there is no distinction between blogroll and categories, then you wouldn’t have a problem in 2.1.3 posting to a psuedo category “links”. But you do.

There are no “link categories” (2.2) There are only categories and subcategories which may or may not be links to you or to someone else. That’s my level of understanding and I remember 2.1.3 diferently. Grain of salt, OK?

Thread Starter cphine
(@cphine)

16 years, 9 months ago

Argh. 🙂
Here’s the issue. Whatever the case/version may be, and whatever the terminology may be, here is as specific as I can get. If this doesn’t work, I’m just going to put my links in a page and be done with it.

If I create a category, say “my category”, by going to Manage –> Categories, that is all good.

Now, if I go to make a Post under Write –> Write Posts, that new category is an option as a category to place the post in.

So too if I go to add a link under Blogroll –> Add Link is that new category available.

HOWEVER; if I first make a post using the category, it no longer is listed as an available category under add link. So too is the reverse true. If I post a new link and set it to that category, it is no longer available when I write a new post.

That is annoying enough.

The second issue is that even when I create a category and place a link in it, it in no way whatsoever affects the user experience. I can create http://www.111.com and http://www.222.com as links, and they appear as such under my blogroll in the sidebar. I can create two categories and place http://www.111.com into one and http://www.222.com into the other. My blogroll continues to look the same. I can create a Parent category of “numbered websites” and place the categories containing each of the two websites under the parent category, and still, no change on the presentation.

Simply put. What the heck does putting your links in categories even accomplish? It doesn’t change or affect anything! All it does is remove that category as being available to place a post in!

moshu
(@moshu)

16 years, 9 months ago

My blogroll continues to look the same.
How and what is displayed it is defined by the parameters of the template tag used, e.g.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/wp_list_bookmarks

Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)
(@otto42)

WordPress.org Admin

16 years, 9 months ago

HOWEVER; if I first make a post using the category, it no longer is listed as an available category under add link. So too is the reverse true. If I post a new link and set it to that category, it is no longer available when I write a new post.

That is annoying enough.

I agree. And it’s only going to get worse too, they re-introduced separation of categories into the latest WordPress. I also think that it sucks, but that’s the way it is.

What the heck does putting your links in categories even accomplish?

Assuming your theme is made correctly, each category of links would have their own different “section” in the sidebar. Themes not using wp_list_bookmarks() may not work properly in this respect.

mgreis
(@mgreis)

16 years, 9 months ago

Speaking as someone who wasted time trying to figure out why the categories appeared and disappeared for posts versus links after doing my install, I couldn’t agree more with the sentiments expressed.

Since you manage categories in one place, there’s no reason to suspect that they are mutually exclusive between posts and links.

Having that separation runs counter to what I imagine would be an objective for many people creating categories in the first place – to organize and guide the user experience.

There may be some people who come to an individual’s blog to hear about anything they have to say, but I’ll bet most people find their way to a site because of some content that’s there. And a site wanting to cover a topic area is naturally going to want to segment the topic so they can cover more ground coherently. So this artificial separation based on the type of content flies in the face of the purpose of having an organized site.

Rather than end on a negative note, I am grateful that I was able to quickly confirm what I suspected about how the code works here in the forums – an active user community is critical to successful use of open source software.

sklass
(@sklass)

16 years, 6 months ago

This topic covers exactly what it is that I want to do with my links – put them into categories that display IN their separate categories on my sidebar rather than being all smushed in together.

I have read through all of the replies and followed the link to the wp_list_bookmark template tag as it appears
that this is exactly what I need to accomplish what it is that I want to do.

My problem however is that I am TOTALLY unfamiliar with html and the person that helped me originally set up my blog appears to have gone missing in action as my email requests for assistance have gone completely unanswered.

I am not averse to finding things out for myself and playing around to achieve what I want for my blog, but I am fearful of breaking it completely and with no-one around to help fix it, this is not something I am prepared to do!!

I understand that I need to copy and paste the relevant code to my sidebar and I also know where to get to the file that contains the existing code, but what I’m not sure of is the ‘parameters’ that are mentioned so that the template tag does exactly what I want it to do. Is there anyone that is prepared to step me through what I need to do with this?

I hope I haven’t ‘hijacked’ this thread by posting here – it is my first time on this forum as a poster rather than a lurker and since this thread covers my precise problem, I thought this is where I should post my query.

Thanks in advance for any assistance…