Category Icons

From Daniels (http://www.gameblogs.com.br/) :

I’ve got to make a widget that will show all category icons side-by-side, and not in a list. Here is the code :

$listing_code = '';
foreach(get_categories("orderby=count&order=DESC") as $category) {
$listing_code .=get_cat_icon("echo=false&cat=".$category->cat_ID)." ";
}
$listing_code .= '';
echo $listing_code;

Thanks for sharing, Daniels.

The plugin received a 4.3 out of 5 in this article written by Rene, in his blog WordPress Plugin Guide :

WordPress Plugin Review : Category Icons (click on the image to read the review)

Thanks Rene.

Just download the plugin (again) if you want it…

Thanks to Alisher Safarov/Alexandra Bolshova (www.comfi.com) for this translation.

I’ve written a function that seems to be working. I think I’m going to include it in a future version of my Category Icons plugin. So, you can have page icons the same way you have category icons in the sidebar.

The following code will add icons in front of the title page in the sidebar when you use the Pages widget. You can see that I’ve used a filter named widget_pages_args to add the filter wp_list_pages in order to parse the HTML generated by wp_list_pages. It’s because I want to display icons only in the sidebar and nowhere else.

To use that code : Read more…

To display the icons in the sidebar, you have 2 solutions :

1. Use the widget
Go to Appearance > Widgets and drag Category Icons Widget to the right. You can have multiple Category Icons widgets.

Category Icons Widget

Category Icons Widget Settings

2. Manually

In the sidebar.php page of your WordPress theme, you must use the put_cat_icons function.

In a previous post, I described how to do this with the help of another plugin : Page Category Plus, but this plugin does not exist anymore, so here is another way to do that.

I’ll use the theme “lightword” for this how to. There is 2 parts :

1. Assign a category to a page

When you’re editing the page, go to the Custom Fields, and add : caticons_page as the key, and in the value field, enter the ID of the category to which the icon is assigned to. It’s like assigning a category to a page.

The icon is assigned to the category ID 4

Use the Custom Fields to display a "Page Icon"

2. Use the get_cat_icon tag to display the icon

In the page.php file, after this line : Read more…

Well, this is a kind of a hack of Krischan Jodies’s popular plugin : Get Recent Comments. Just before this line of code :

$output = str_replace("%comment_link",    $comment_link,     $output);

add these lines : Read more…

This is said in the website wpbeginner, in this post :

http://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/10-most-wanted-category-hacks-and-plugins-for-wordpress/

Pictures make a site more lively which is a given which is why blogger might want to associate pictures with their category. This plugin lets you associate a specific icon of your choice to a designated category. You can use this plugin to list categories by icon with or without names, and much more.

This is what John Owen said in his post in Web Media Magazine : http://www.webmediamagazine.com/webdesign/50-different-ways-to-vastly-improve-your-wordpress-blog/

Usually the sidebar is clogged up with meta data, advertisement’s and tag clouds. We sometimes miss the categories in all the mess, assigning images to your categorys is a great way to fix this and will help your visitors navigate your blog with ease.

This is what John Pratt said in his post in WPHacks : http://wphacks.com/10-ways-to-improve-navigation-in-wordpress/

Having your categories a post is assigned to listed and linked is a great way to get visitors to view everything else you have posted in that category, but sometimes (like “ad blindness) readers are blinded to post meta info. Solve that by assigning images to your categories, so that they stand out prominently! All you need is the Category Icons plugin.

And I agree.

Adam of WordPress Modder has written an how to of this :

http://wordpressmodder.org/using-the-category-icons-plugin-and-thematic-to-create-custom-category-pages-631.html

RushiKumar has written a tutorial on how to do this in GuidesForge.com :

http://www.guidesforge.com/how-to/adding-trails-in-category-icons

There are 2 filters :

1. category_icons

It can be used with the get_cat_icon tag. Examples of how to use it :

How to set a default icon

How to assign a specific icon for a post

How to modify the category icons through functions.php

2. category_icons_widget

It can be used with put_cat_icons tag. A how to needs to be written.

Sometimes, you need to use the tag get_cat_icon or/and put_cat_icons in a script. So to get the icon in a variable, it must not be displayed. The parameter to not display the category and to get it returned is : echo, and it needs to be set to false. Here are examples of how to use it. If your script is not in the Loop, you must use the cat parameter and give it a category id. Read more…

As always, thanks to my friend Gianni (www.gidibao.net) : the italian language is updated to the last version of the plugin. Download the plugin again to get this update.

• Two new tabs added : How To (WP 2.8 only) & Support the plugin

Since v2.1, you can display the category icons with Rob Marsh’s Recent Posts plugin. Here is how. In Recent Posts, go to Output, enter {caticons} in the field, and click on Save Output Settings :

Rob Marsh's Recent Posts plugin

If you use the widget, it’ll be displayed like this in the default WordPress theme :
Read more…

Thanks to Shlizer (http://shlizer.ayz.pl) for his work ! Download the plugin (v2.1) again to get the polish language.

In a previous post (“beware of imitations“), I said that Category Icons Premium Module for Another Wordpress Classifieds Plugin was an imitation and that you should not buy a plugin that you could have for free. Well, I was mistaken : the author sent me the source code, and it’s not comparable to the WordPress Category Icons plugin. So, I made a mistake, and I apologize to A. Lewis for my error. I’m sorry.

A new language is added to the plugin translations : belarusian (belorussian). This translation is for the version number 2.0.7 of the plugin but it’ll work with the last version, of course. Thanks to Fat Cower (http://www.fatcow.com) for his work. Download the plugin (v2.1) again to get this update.