I am not able to choose categories

Thanks for reporting this. It is most definitely possible to add a sidebar to particular categories.

Your problem sounds like an incompatibility with another plugin. Deactivate all other plugins and try adding conditions again. If this fixes the problem, you should activate the other plugins one by one to find out which one is the cause of the problem.

Let me know if this solves your problem.

Hello Joachim,

I love your Content Aware Sidebars plugin.

Here comes the HOWEVER part…

We have the same problem and can NEVER get a category or page name to be accepted for use in the sidebar settings.

When I type, or paste in the needed category name, or type or paste in the category slug–it NEVER changes.

– – –

And the classic
“remove and dissemble your car’s engine to get your car running again”
(disable all plugins to find which one doesn’t like my plugin)
approach will not work on this site with millions of visitors each month.

We cannot take the site down to diagnose a plugin conflict.

– – –

Why can’t we just have a simple Category drop down list appear like all other plugins?

This happened in the past, and here it is again. It would be SO MUCH EASIER to use the traditional drop down method–where once a person chose to use categories or pages–then the drop down would appear with a list of the categories or pages.

Also, when I choose the Select Content Type drop down, there are THREE separate “CATEGORIES” options to choose from! Which one should I choose?

No matter which “Categories” I choose, I can never select, type or paste a category name or a category slug.

Here is a quick (nine second) screencast:

https://screencast.com/t/4t06iADXORTc

Thank you for your help Joachim.

Warmest,

Chris

Update question.

Can you let me know the table and field I can use to insert the slug or ID of the category I need for the sidebar using phpmyadmin?

This will help me get the sidebar going fast.

Thank you,

Chris

I agree that sometimes deactivating other plugins to diagnose a problem is not possible. However, incompatibility caused by other plugins is the number one cause of the problems users report here.
Being a free plugin, I can only provide free support when I have extra time, so “meeting users mid way” is the most efficient way to diagnose problems.

Your screencast is great for that. Could you try to make one where you click on one of the categories? And other content types?

That you see 3 different categories might mean that you have some plugin that creates custom taxonomies, is this correct?

The reason I don’t use normal dropdowns is that it doesn’t scale. If you have hundreds or thousands of pages/categories, it will slow down the page load a lot.
With these “smart” dropdowns you can scroll through all content and search inline – all without it slowing down page load.

I keep testing what works well and how to make it easier for users, so I appreciate your feedback.

To add a condition group with post categories, use this code:

$sidebar_id = 0;
$taxonomy = 'category';
$terms = array('cat1','cat2','cat3');

$group_id = WPCACore::add_condition_group($sidebar_id);
wp_set_object_terms( $group_id, $terms, $taxonomy );