Display category with no posts?

Phooey. The above isn’t working *totally* right, either. I also need – if any posts are made, only the newest made *category* displays on the front page. Right now, if a post is made in an old category, then it’ll bring the old category to the front (because of the new post) – I can’t have that either.

I need the newest category to stay on the home page, regardless of whether or not there’s any posts in the category, and the newest category has to be on the front page, even if a post is made in an older category.

Urgh…am I asking too much? I hope not.

well, I got it, partially. I fixed the code above so that I *can* pull the newest category ID (which, in 2.3, is the terms_id and the taxonomy of “category”). So *that* part is working – I can pull the ID of the newest category, no problem.

However, when I create a post, it seems to override the category. I’ve tried doing a query_posts('cat=22'); (“22” is currently the newest cat ID), but it doesn’t matter – if I make a new post in an older category, the query gets overridden.

Right now, my (getting there) code looks like so – this is the code that *will* pull out the most recently created/newest category, but the problems above remain:

<?php // custom query for main category
  $new_query = new WP_Query('category_name=new_category&showposts=1');
  while ($new_query->have_posts()) : $new_query->the_post();

// get the most recently created category
    global $wpdb;
    $newcat = $wpdb->get_var("SELECT term_id, taxonomy
                              FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy
                              WHERE term_id > 0
                              AND taxonomy = 'category'
                              ORDER BY term_id
                              DESC
                              LIMIT 1
                             ");
    $newcat_query = "'cat=" . $newcat . "'";
    query_posts($newcat_query);
  ?>
      <div class="post_current" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
				<h1>Current:</h1>

				<div class="entry">
					<?php
          $cat = get_the_category();
          $cat = $cat[0];
          echo '<h2><a href="' . get_category_link($cat) . '">' . $cat->cat_name . '</a></h2>';
          echo '<p>' . $cat->category_description . '</p>';
          ?>
				</div>

So would anyone know why the query is getting overridden? It seems to me that, if I’m querying *only* the newest category ID (which, when I print/echo out the $newcat_query, it *is* correct), it should only look for posts in the ID specified – but if a newer post is made, then the query gets overridden, and the newest post pulls the older category in.

Hope I’m making sense.

That’s true – I direct people that way, as well. But this isn’t a paid job – which is why I was looking over here 🙂 (You know what they say about the word “assume”… 😉 )

Michael – although normally you would be right – that wasn’t working for me. I’m going to try to keep this post small – so I’m not going to bother to explain why. But your suggestion gave me an idea – which I’m happy to say *did* work. (Turns out my issue was that I was upgin the “$wpdb->get_vars” query – which only returns *one* variable. I needed access to several.

So, in case anyone in the future needs this, I’m going to post my solution here. It’s ugly as hell, but it works, so I don’t care 😉

What I was trying to do was have – on the home page – the newest category display, regardless of whether or not there were posts under that category. If there *were*, then the most recent post would display beneath the category.

My solution was this:

<?php // get the most recently created category
  global $wpdb;
  $catquery = ("SELECT $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id, $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy, $wpdb->term_taxonomy.description, $wpdb->term_taxonomy.count, $wpdb->terms.term_id, $wpdb->terms.name, $wpdb->terms.slug
                FROM $wpdb->term_taxonomy, $wpdb->terms
                WHERE $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id > 0
                AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.taxonomy = 'category'
                AND $wpdb->term_taxonomy.term_id = $wpdb->terms.term_id
                ORDER BY $wpdb->terms.term_id
                DESC
                LIMIT 1
                ");

    $newcat = $wpdb->get_row($catquery, ARRAY_A);
    $newcatid = $newcat['term_id'];
    $newcatname = $newcat['name'];
    $newcatdesc = $newcat['description'];
    $newcatslug = $newcat['slug'];
    $newcatcount = $newcat['count'];
 ?>

//display stuff here

<?php // if the category had posts associate with it, show the most recent one
    $newcat_query = new WP_Query('category_name=' . $newcatslug . '&showposts=1');
    while ($newcat_query->have_posts()) : $newcat_query->the_post(); ?>

//display stuff here		

    <?php endwhile;?>

And now I have my prettiness. Hope it helps someone else in the future 🙂