Comments on: Per Category Intro Text

By: Mike D

Mike D — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:00:08 +0000

Big help – thanks!

By: Patrice

Patrice — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 02:08:55 +0000

As easy as 1-2-3! Thank you so much. I have been looking for this for a little while now.

Thanks!

By: Mali

Mali — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:20:36 +0000

Big thanks for the reply. Sorry for the delay but Christmas and all that Hope you had good holidays. So far so good the description works great but now ive got a fussy client asking if they can add the text them selves Doh Not letting them touch the back end.

Cheers
Mali

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:12:39 +0000

Hi Mali, you can add some styling to the text by adding a class or id to the

tags, like

and then in your CSS, add

.category_desc {
   padding: 5px;
   border: 1px solid #CCCCCC;
}

Hope that helps.

By: Mali

Mali — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:53:57 +0000

Great Post Alex, and works a treat, but sadly im not a coding man and just wondered how i could add some style to the text? Any help would be much appreciated.

Once again cheers for the help

By: Trisha Cupra, Web Design Watchdog

Trisha Cupra, Web Design Watchdog — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:19:09 +0000

Is there a way to write the PHP code so that it checks if there is something written in the description field for the category, and if there is then it displays it, but if it is blank it disregards it?

By: Mauro, Suitecom Hotel Marketing

Mauro, Suitecom Hotel Marketing — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:52:14 +0000

I resolved. I have done so:

1. I created a file (catintro.php) where I placed the code

2. Then I have inserted with a “php include” in category.php

I hope this help someone

Ciao!

By: Mauro, Suitecom Hotel Marketing

Mauro, Suitecom Hotel Marketing — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:34:06 +0000

Hi,

very useful!

But if I have many categories (for example 50) is not convenient to have a long list of “elseif.” Maybe is there a more elegant way?

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:29:24 +0000

@Jasonian – It suggests the same thing in the codex because it was me that added it! The suggestion that that section starts with is that you could create a different category.php file for each category, adding different text at the top. This is of course a lot of work, so I added a dynamic version, allowing for one category.php file.

As per your second point, you could of course use
< ?php echo category_description(); ?> in your category.php file, however this would then always output the description, regardless of whether you wanted one or not. Using this method allows for you to define some text for only certain categories.

I hope that answers your query!

By: Jasonian.

Jasonian. — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:09:55 +0000

The WordPress.org Codex makes the same suggestion as you do, and I don’t understand why.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Category_Templates#Adding_Text_to_Category_Pages

Categories in WordPress have a “description” field (see your Manage > Categories admin page). Instead of having to write code to check each category, just display that built-in description.

http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/category_description

I have a feeling I’m missing an important aspect of usage….