[Plugin: Idealien Category Enhancements] Empty Drop-Down

Ok. Figured it out.

In the documentation and at the bottom of the settings screen there is this innocuous statement:

Similar to a theme styles.css file, for best usability your category template files should have the following comments at the top:

<?php /*
Category Template: Custom Template Name
Template URI: URL path where bloggers can find more information about your template(s)
Description: A short description goes here.
*/ ?>

It turns out that this is NOT just commenting stuff you can ignore or change! It is data that is used to -amongst other things, generate the drop down list! ...for best usability Haha! That’s kinda funny. It should read: If you want to use this plugin you must...

v1.0 ice.php line 354:

//Inspect header of category template file for generic info to display
				$categoryData = get_category_template_data($template_dir . "/" . $file);

See? There’s a whole darn function that parses your template file looking for that data. Sheesh.

In my case, I didn’t want to style the categories -just the posts in a category so I only created e.g. single-wide.php. Well, it turns out you must also create the category-wide.php with that special comment area so that you can have a drop down with which to assign the template. Makes sense. The gotcha’ is that the category needs the template assigned if you want to style posts! You can’t just create single-wide.php you must also create category-wide.php.

The category-wide.php can be identical to your stock category.php file if you don’t want to change the styling.

I’m sure some conditional statements can check for the ‘single only’ case, but as usual, that task is put on the long list of things to get back to.

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers.

Sorry you had such troubles musnake – it was my first real forray into WordPress plugins and the actions / hooks / logic. I’ve just released a new version with support for WP 2.7 (still back supporting to WP 2.5).

I just found this comment after releasing it – so I’ll take a look at a better way to do the drop-down. If the theme doesn’t have a commented name use the filename minus the category identifier.

If anybody has any other suggestions of related functionality they’d like to see for this, I would love to hear it.

Dear Idealien.

I have happily installed and activated your plug in, but i cannot see any of my template in the drop down list.

All these templates have the comments

<?php /*
     Category Template: Portal
     Template URI: https://www.partireper.it
     Description: Template for the category Portal
     */ ?>

Please advise…

Regards.

Gionata Nencini
https://www.Partireper.it

@partireper.it:

What is the filename for that template file?
What do you have in the category template prefix field?
Is ‘Enhanced Categories?’ set to Enhanced (On) in the options window?

I have released an updated version (1.2) to co-incide with the release of WP 2.8. The comments at the top of a category template file are no longer manditory. Full release notes are available here – https://idealienstudios.com/projects/ice/v12release/

I’d like to make a follow up post to comment on this issue further.
I’m currently using WP 2.8.4 and the drop down template selection was empty for me too.

These are the actions i took previous to finding the solution.

-activated plugin
-copied ‘comment header’ to top of category template file.(already uploaded)
-configured plugin and saved.
-proceeded to Categories section in WP admin to select a previously configured category with the newly created template
-no template available.

SOLUTION: -turned plugin off and back on.
template now available to be selected.

So my guess is the template needs to be available BEFORE the plugin is activated or the plugin needs to be fixed so that it can find the files properly.