wmburke

Aha!! I got it.

It’s just serialized php values. Sometimes asking the questions publicly is all it takes to help things make sense.

Thanks – got it!

It has taken a bit of SQL learning, but here’s the code that I’m using to limit the links that are displayed to just that fit into two specific categories:

<?php $link_list = $wpdb->get_results(SELECT wp_links.link_name, wp_links.link_url, wp_links.link_description, wp_links.link_notes
FROM wp_links
WHERE wp_links.link_name
IN (

SELECT wp_links.link_name
FROM wp_links
INNER JOIN wp_term_relationships ON wp_links.link_id = wp_term_relationships.object_id
INNER JOIN wp_term_taxonomy ON wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id
WHERE wp_term_taxonomy.term_id = '100'
)
AND wp_links.link_name
IN (

SELECT wp_links.link_name
FROM wp_links
INNER JOIN wp_term_relationships ON wp_links.link_id = wp_term_relationships.object_id
INNER JOIN wp_term_taxonomy ON wp_term_relationships.term_taxonomy_id = wp_term_taxonomy.term_taxonomy_id
WHERE wp_term_taxonomy.term_id = '107'
)
ORDER BY wp_links.link_notes ASC ");
foreach ($link_list as $link_list) {?>
	<li><a href="<?php echo $link_list->link_url ?>"><?php echo $link_list->link_name?></a> <?php echo $link_list->link_description ?></li>
<?php } ?>

Now, I know it looks ugly, but here’s what you need to know to put it together.

1. You need to familiarize yourself with the WordPress Database Tables – you can do that from the codex here, although it really helped me to use PHPMyAdmin also. This is also intensely useful for verifying that the SQL Query (everything from Select to ASC) works right.
2. The SELECT statement right at the beginning specifies what variables get returned from the links database – you can see that I’m only using the name, URL, and Description.
3. The section following the first WHERE statement contains multiple selection criteria. The first says that the link must be contained within category ’98’. The second says that the link must be contained within category ‘105’. And the two are connected by an AND statement (You could also use an OR, although this would be easier done with wp_list_bookmarks unless you something complicated).
4. ORDER BY is the term that the returned list is ordered by (obvious, right?) sorted in ASCending or DESCending order.
5. The output is just customized html – I made them as list items for my use.

That’s it – I hope it’s useful to someone else.

Hey SmallPotato,

Thanks for the quick reply. Maybe I’m just missing something obvious, but I get no results from this code – just as I didn’t from what I was trying before.

I’m not putting this in the loop, so my actual code is:

<?php if ( !(”== category_description(89)) ) : echo apply_filters(‘archive_meta’, category_description(89)); endif; ?>

Just in case I wasn’t clear, I’m trying to display the description from a link category – not from a post category.

Maybe it just can’t be done???