2 category widgets – can posts be added to one or the other?

I’m a simple person with little background for hacking any of the WP code or PHP in general, so I often come here and get real help. For that I thank you all.

I have a simple question related to this thread on category widgets and try as I might, I cannot find answers here or via Google or Yahoo! or anywhere else.

What in the world is the purpose of the multiple category widgets available via most WP themes these days? I was hoping to do something similar to what’s asked about in this thread. It seems if I create category-1 and category-2 widgets, I ought to be able to easily display categories I want in number 1 and others I want in number 2.

But, as pointed out here, I can’t easily do that.

So what in the world is the purpose of being able to create multiple category widgets? And is there a plugin that will allow multiple category widgets displaying different categories in each widget?

I really appreciate the tremendous help this forum offers. Thanks in advance.

@speerga: Yeah good point about the Category widgets–hopefully they’ll get some attention in future releases.

Otto’s execPHP is a pretty easy way to get a different widget for each set of categories you want, but since that doesn’t seem to be acceptable, check out https://widgets.wordpress.com/?s=category

@michaelh — you said: “Otto’s execPHP is a pretty easy way to get a different widget for each set of categories you want, but since that doesn’t seem to be acceptable,.. “

I have a plugin installed called Exec-PHP. Is that the same as Otto’s widget you’re referring to?

It sounds like, from your comment, that the execPHP widget you’ve mentioned would do what I want if it let’s me get “a different widget for each set of categories.” Or at least it would get me close to what I want?

Any way you can explain to me what I would need and how that might work to do it that way?

Thanks again to all of you for your help and suggestions.

Gary

I had the same needs and was so glad to finally find the answer here: Otto’s widget!
But even after I installed the plug in, I do not see any php text widget box added to the old widget selections. The plug seems to be installed right because i see it listed in my plugin management page. What can be wrong with this?

this thread has been a massive help in getting me where I want to be!

thanks!

Anybody know how to remove the word ‘category’?

Code im using is

<ul><?php wp_list_categories('orderby=name
&use_desc_for_title=0&child_of=212'); ?></ul>

@rize
You can find all the wp_list_category parameters at
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags/wp_list_categories

To remove the title you can add &title_li= after 212 in your code.

@everyone else
Some good code for selectively showing posts in categories is at
https://www.pearsonified.com/2008/02/what_every_blogger_needs_to_know_about_categories.php

So it would appear..and this is driving me nuts too…We still don’t know why we can put multiple instances of the built in category widget on sidebars? In other words BUMP.

And yes that Chris Pearson article is great, but still think the widget could be better. Starting to hate categories and tags.

If there was a simple setting to the categories widget that said “show the following categories only” and then let you put in the category ID# (or #s separated by comma), I would think this would be the perfect fix to the problem…