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Version 1.3   Updated Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 7:19pm

Multi Column Category List Plugin for WordPress

This plugin generates an alphabetical listing of your WordPress categories in multiple columns. You can choose the number of columns to display, with an option to split up the list of categories by letter. It also supports the use of a custom header to help separate the categories. For example, you could have it say ‘Topics: A’ and then list the topics that start with ‘A’, etc. The category list can easily be added to any post or page with the trigger text, or called directly from a template file. A CSS file is also included for easy style changes.

Related Plugins

There is also a plugin available to generate a multi-column list of your WordPress links.

Download

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Installation

  • Download the above file and uncompress
  • Upload dd-multi-col-cats.php to your plugins directory
  • Upload dd-multi-col-cats.css to your theme directory
  • Activate the plugin from the WordPress admin panel
  • Configure the options under the admin panel: Options – DDMultiColCats

Usage

To use this plugin, simply add the following trigger text to a post or page:

<!-- multicolcats -->

If you prefer, you can also call the function directly from a template file with the following command:

<?php echo ddmcc_generate(); ?>

Change Log

  • 09-29-07 Version 1.3 – Updated for WordPress 2.3. Added ‘Load Default Options’ button. Removed javascript expand code because it was too buggy.
  • 05-16-07 Version 1.2 – Updated for WordPress 2.2.
  • 03-02-07 Version 1.1 – Option added to allow click-to-expand lists. Special thanks to Richard K Miller for submitting the code!
  • 02-03-07 Version 1.0 – First release.

Options

Here are the options available for this plugin under the WordPress admin panel

Number of columns

The number of columns that the categories will be shown in. If you want to show more columns than your layout width will handle, you can adjust the width of each column in the CSS file.

Separate items

Here you can choose to separate the categories by letter, with a custom separation header, or no separation at all.

Separation header

If the separation option is enabled, this is where you enter your separation text, which will be shown above each set of items. You can use %L to show the letter. For example, if you enter Topics: %L then it will show Topics: A, (list of cats), Topics: B, (list of cats), etc…

Excluded categories

This is a comma-separated list of the category IDs you want to exclude from the list.

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  1. Chris: It cannot do that currently.

    Spencer: You can add extra code at the end of the plugin output by appending it to the $t_out variable, which is returned in the function which generates the output.

  2. 14
    Chris

    Love the plug-in, exactly what I needed. Is their a way to display sub-categories under their parents? thanks

  3. This is an extremely handy plugin. Thank you very much. You should consider making this into a widget since many people are going to use this in their sidebar. I took a crack at it but failed.

    Also, I seem to be having an issue with clearing when using this. It is obviously my markup that is causing the problem, but if you have any info on how or where a clearing div should be added, I would appreciate it.

    Thanks again.

  4. [...] Multi Column Category list Plugin for Wordpress This plugin generates an alphabetical listing of your WordPress categories in multiple columns. [...]

  5. [...] Multi Column Category List genera una lista alfabetica delle vostre categorie wordpress, su più colonne. Il numero di colonne si può scegliere, e un’altra opzione permette di mettere in testa una categoria preferita. Compatibile con Wordpress 2.1, non testato con altre versioni. [...]

  6. Matt: Thanks for the new plugin – I’m excited to try it out. You plugin creators are the best!

  7. I just added a plugin which displays links in multiple categories as well. You can find a link to it at the top of this article under ‘Related Plugins’ :)

  8. I, too, have just a few categories, but many links and categories of links. I use a plugin now, but it gives me a very, very long single-column list… and it keeps growing! So a dd-multi-col-links plugin would be really useful. Your site mapping plugin is great!
    Many thanks.

  9. Miriam: Glad you like it. Categories and links are handled a bit differently, but it would be possible to make a plugin to do the same with links for sure. I will keep it in mind :)

  10. Would it be possible to hack this so that it applies to links (i.e. the blogroll) instead of categories? I tend to have more links than categories on my blogs, and it would be helpful to the readers if I could easily put them in columns. Anyways, this is a great plugin!

  11. [...] Multi Column Category List Plugin for WordPress This plugin generates an alphabetical listing of your WordPress categories in multiple columns. You can choose the number of columns to display, with an option to split up the list of categories by letter. (tags: wordpress plugin wp-plugins) [...]

  12. Thomas: Actually I do not, since I do not have that big of a category list and it would not show it off very well.

    If anyone out there is using this plugin, and would like a link to their site from this one (to act as a demo) let me know! :)

  13. Look’s like a great plugin. Do you have a live preview on your site somewhere?

  14. jochen: You upload it to the dir of the theme you are using.

  15. Hi,
    do i have to upload th css into the theme dir or into the the theme for example /classic?

    Jochen

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