Collapsing Categories WordPress Plugin

by Deborah on August 6, 2010

Recently one of my clients wanted his categories to display in the sidebar. And he wanted the posts to display under each category.

So, of course, I went to the WordPress Plugin Repository. A search for ‘categories’ yielded a mere 42 pages of results.

How did I choose?

I just started reading the descriptions. If you ever have some free time, browse around the Repository. What these plugin developers do is amazing.

There are category plugins that hide certain categories from certain user levels. Some exclude designated categories from designated pages. Plugins that translate the category names. Plugins that create a category cloud widget. A plugin to exclude specific categories from the home page.  Plugins that do things in code that I don’t understand.

And finally on page two, I found what I was looking for: Collapsing Categories.

This is a very simple plugin that uses Javascript to form a collapsible set of
links in the sidebar for the categories. Every post corresponding to a given
category will be expanded.

Perfect!

I always want to see the front end view before I spend a lot of time figuring out the rest of the plugin, so I took a quick trip to the widget section and dragged the ‘Collapsing Categories’ widget into place. It displayed flawlessly with the default settings. Take a look:

Note the little arrows pointing to each category name. See beside ‘Email Plugins’, the arrow points down instead. The titles of the three posts I’ve written and assigned to that category are displaying. Visitors can click the category of interest and navigate from the sidebar to any posts they want to read. Clicking the arrow again will collapse the posts, making it easier  to navigate.

Next week I will explain how to install and configure this plugin. It has the ability to customize the JavaScript, and the widget itself has an extensive profile for customization. We’ll see what this plugin is capable of. Talk with you then.

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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

csoftAdmin February 26, 2011 at 5:02 am

I need exactly same but for the Admin panel in Add New Post.

I want my word-press post be in specific category like Country – State – City. But my list is toooooo big so it causes the loading time so higher.

I want to modify this category section like.

On the new post it only shows the country list when I click on the country then it loads the states for that parent country. And when I clicked on the state then it loads the city list.

I search for the plugin which suits my requirement but I fail If you know any plugin which help me then please recommend me.

Or give me some suggestion how I make this king of plugin from start.

Cheers!!!

Deborah February 27, 2011 at 8:10 am

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to your question. :-(

I would post the question here: http://wordpress.org/tags/collapsing-categories?forum_id=10. This is where the plugin developer hangs out and all the WordPress developers. Hopefully, they will havecan answer for you.

Best,
Debbie

Chad Phillips August 17, 2011 at 11:30 am

Hi,
I had to solve the problem of collapsing categories in the admin and I’ve written out the solution here: http://www.newvibewebdesign.com/collapsible-categories-in-admin-for-wordpress/
I hope this helps!
Best,
Chad

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