Categories: still No categories

URL please

https://www.elinemerchandising.com/blog/

Do any of the categories have posts in them? Ah, looking at your site, you have no posts PERIOD.

You have to have posts in your categories in order to see them. No posts, no categories.

You can force it to display empty categories by changing the hide_empty option to False using the list_cats or wp_list_cats Template Tags.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags/list_cats
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Template_Tags/wp_list_cats

which file is list_cats function in?

Depends on the Theme you’re using. For the default Theme, it’s in the sidebar (one call to the function is anyway, maybe there’s more).
Look for <?php wp_list_cats('sort_column=name&optioncount=1&hierarchical=0'); ?>
If you want empty categories to show, change that to
<?php wp_list_cats('hide_empty=0&sort_column=name&optioncount=1&hierarchical=0'); ?>

in “sidebar” file of wp_admin folder, there isn’t “wp_list_cats” function

Do you have any apostrophies in the category title? I recently found that Jack's Blog wouldn’t work… that list_cats() just fails to output anything.

If that’s your problem, replace the ' with ’

Be sure to include all the punctuation, including the semi-colon at the end.

I found that Jack’s Blog works, and displays as “Jack’s Blog.”

Well, the code in backticks here doesn’t work either. So, I’ll try this:

Replace the ' with & # 8 2 1 7 ; but remove the spaces.