TechnowledgeBase

You’ve created some categories for your Wordpress blog. You start writing posts and even adding links to your Blogroll, assigning each one to it’s appropriate category… but then you notice something strange.

Some of your categories are missing! Some of them are there… but some are clearly NOT. You go to Manage–>Categories and, yup, there they are! So you go back to write your next post, and the category you want to use is still not there! WTF!?

The Problem:
In Wordpress, not all of your categories are showing up in the sidebar when you try to write a post.


The Cause:
Wordpress has TWO separate lists of categories, one for posts and one for links (i.e., your Blogroll). If you go looking for both lists, you won’t find them… you’ll only find the one list under Manage–>Categories. That list contains both sets of categories, all mixed in together. If a category is defined as being used for links, then it won’t appear when you’re writing a post. If a category is for posts, then you can’t use it for links. There’s no way to tell which is which just by looking at the list. And there’s also no way to designate what purpose a category is for when you create it.

So how does Wordpress know what’s what? And, more importantly, how do YOU know?

Wordpress guesses. Us poor humans are just SOL. When you create a category, it is empty and can be used for either purpose (posts or links). But the second you use it, it becomes marked for that purpose ONLY. For example, if you create a “Programming” category and the first thing you do with it is put a link in it… then it won’t show up on the sidebar when you try to write a post; it will only be available for links. And vice-versa.

Confusing? Yes.
That makes NO DAMN SENSE AT ALL!!? Absolutely.
Some developer somewhere needs to be slapped to death, resurrected, and then kicked repeatedly in the nuts until they ooze out his ears? I’m with you 100%.

But none of that gets us to-

The Solution:
There is no good solution.
There is only the bad solution, and the ugly solution.

The Bad (but easy) solution-
Create a general “Links” category and put all your links in it. That’s it. You won’t be able to assign links to specific categories, but at least they’ll be there and all the remaining categories (everything except “Links”) will be available for posts.

The Ugly (please don’t do it) solution-
I am NOT going to be responsible for you hosing your Wordpress installation by telling you how to actually FIX this problem. Instead, I’ll just point you in the right direction. In reality, this seems like a pretty simple thing to do. You just change an SQL query or two in a core Wordpress file. If this type of thing doesn’t bother you, then by all means, get to it. And let me know how it went. But if you have no idea what SQL is and couldn’t navigate a PHP file if your life depended on it… then please accept the Bad solution and move on.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under Wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.