Title: Show category>subcategory>posts
Last modified: August 21, 2016

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# Show category>subcategory>posts

 *  [ashley](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ashleycox/)
 * (@ashleycox)
 * [12 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/show-categorysubcategoryposts/)
 * I’ve got wordpress up and running; and I’ve added several categories, subcategories,
   and posts. However, I don’t like the way wordpress displays categories by default.
 * What I want to achieve is to only display top level categories in the categories
   widget list. Then, when a user clicks the category to go to the category page,
   they’re presented with a list of sub categories. Selecting a subcategory gives
   them the posts.
 * Is there any way of achieving this? The current method, to me at least, seems
   pretty illogical and makes subcategories pointless.
 * And, while we’re on the subject of categories, is there a way to a. Have the 
   widget display all top level categories, even when they have no posts? and b.
   Display a message that says, “Looks like there aren’t any posts here; why not
   select another category instead?” rather than “it seems we can’t find what you’re
   lookign for” should they click on a category that contains no posts?
 * Thanks for any and all help!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Thread Starter [ashley](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ashleycox/)
 * (@ashleycox)
 * [12 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/show-categorysubcategoryposts/#post-4741349)
 * OK, Progress. Using a widget called ‘NS Category Widget’, I’ve managed to get
   only the top level categories to display on my pages, irespective of whether 
   they contain any posts.
    So all that’s left is to figure out how to: When a user
   clicks a category, present the user with a list of categories on the resulting
   page
 * Any ideas?
 *  [Evan Herman](https://wordpress.org/support/users/eherman24/)
 * (@eherman24)
 * [12 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/show-categorysubcategoryposts/#post-4741351)
 * Yea you’re going to have to go with a plugin to achieve this along.
 * Other than that you’d have to write a custom query to pull top level categories,
   and mix in some javascript/jquery to the drop down piece of it functioning properly.
 * If your not too familiar with code it can be a bit challenging to achieve.
 *  Thread Starter [ashley](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ashleycox/)
 * (@ashleycox)
 * [12 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/show-categorysubcategoryposts/#post-4741354)
 * Thanks for your reply. I’m not looking to do a dropdown menu; what I’m looking
   for is that each category page shows a list of categories, unless it is the lowest
   level category; in which case, it shows the posts.
    If necessary; I’ll have to
   modify my theme and do this in PHP. Just was kindaa hoping there would be an 
   easier way, given that WP is supposed to be point n’ click… or am I perhaps just
   getting lazy?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Show category>subcategory>posts’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [categories](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/categories/)
 * [subcategories](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/subcategories/)
 * [widget](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/widget/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [ashley](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ashleycox/)
 * Last activity: [12 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/show-categorysubcategoryposts/#post-4741354)
 * Status: not resolved

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