Hi progresst,
AWPCP has its own set of categories to use–we don’t allow reuse of the existing ones from WordPress. There’s no way to integrate those today.
I’m finding that is common with many of these plugins. Why are they built this way?
Why goto the trouble of making a custom category when using existing categories make is so much easier to integrate other posts or utilize search plugins that you might want to integrate?
I really think it is overkill and adds a layer of complexity nobody really can explain why is there?
Hi progresst,
Well, I can tell you why in this case.
First, AWPCP is pretty mature for a plugin–it started back in 2007, which was way before WordPress even allowed us to share the categories in any meaningful way. So that’s part of it for us.
Other plugins are based on custom post types–each custom post type has its own distinct, unique categories for a variety of reasons. That separation allows for more flexibility (not everyone wants this kind of integration–in fact, the majority want the opposite) There are API calls that allow you to force a custom post type to use the standard WP categories, but that can wreak havoc depending on how your want to use the categories. For example, AWPCP allows you to import data from a CSV file. You might not want all those categories on your WP posts, but if they were shared, you’d have no choice in the matter.
There are plusses and minuses to it, but overall, that’s why we don’t do it.
