Filter Dropdown for Sub-categories of the current parent

Tagged: category, subcategory

This topic has 6 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 8 years ago by Anonymous.

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

Anonymous
(Private) October 11, 2016 at 7:04 pm #63380

Hey Guys,

Just purchased and installed the plugin – love it.

My first question is, we have a huge category list and we’re trying to make it more manageable for the user. So let’s say a user navigated to a category called ‘Fishing’. What we’d like is for the category dropdown of S&F to only show child-categories of the current category… is that possible?

Thank you for your time.
Conor

Trevor
(Private) October 11, 2016 at 7:19 pm #63384

Hi Conor

It can be done with a form field to restrict it to one parent. There is a Categories Tags … tab where you can include only the parent term in question.

However, iF you have a Category list with multiple Parents and children within them, they would be much better as separate taxonomies (which will require some work to change from). I would recommend the CPT UI plugin to add the taxonomies.

It doesn’t directly answer your question I know, but I suspect your next question would be can I have the category field more than once? And the answer would be ‘no’.

It is a question of good data structure for SEO and UIX.

Anonymous
(Private) October 11, 2016 at 10:29 pm #63420

Hey Trevor,

Thanks for taking the time to help me. It may be outside the terms of your support, but i would be hugely grateful for your knowledge and advice, you obviously know much more about this than I do.

We do indeed have multiple parents with children. For example, our category structure looks like this:

HUNTING
– Gear
– Locations
– Season

FISHING
– Gear
– Species
– Location

Let’s say we go down the custom taxonomies route as suggested, are you saying that we can create a ‘hunting’ taxonomy, which can have it’s own separate list of categories under it (Gear, Locations, Season) etc?

I just need to get this worked out in my head and i can then start implementing it. Right now I’m not totally clear on taxonomies and it having child cats.

Trevor
(Private) October 12, 2016 at 8:57 am #63448

Yes, you can. Personally, whilst I have hierarchical terms allowed on taxonomies (it is an option in CPT UI when you make or edit a taxonomy) because it looks nicer in the admin, I never actually make taxonomies or categories hierarchical. I always make additional taxonomies (category is just another name for taxonomy).

I never use taxonomies or categories on more than one post type. Unless I genuinely have a ‘blog’, I disable blogging and do not use categories or tags at all. I make Custom Post Types and taxonomies instead. I use as many different post types as are needed/dictated by the data that they contain. For example, if I had an outdoor sports site, I might even consider having a Custom post Type for Fishing, Hunting, Camping, Trekking etc. This then means my URLs become far more SEO friendly, such as http://myoutdoors.com/fishing/a-week-on-the-yukon/ where the article (or post) is titled A Week on the Yukon and I would also then be able to have an ‘archives’ page just for fishing.

SEO bots understand this structuring and will attach more importance to my site as I have helped the user fid what they want. It also makes menus easier. And searching/filtering.

Anonymous
(Private) October 12, 2016 at 10:36 pm #63655

This was hugely helpful, Trevor, thank you very much for your time and advice.

Trevor
(Private) October 13, 2016 at 9:37 am #63684

This post, whilst a bit ‘preachy’, might also be of use:

https://support.searchandfilter.com/forums/topic/multiple-categories-combination/#post-55166

Can I close this thread, if we are done that is?

Anonymous
(Private) October 13, 2016 at 10:32 pm #63885

Yes please do mark as resolved.
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