QuickTip: Removing Category Support

There was a question in the WordPress.org support forums asking how to remove or hide the category support built into Connections. Category support is a feature that is deeply integrated into Connections so the feature can not be “remove” but access to it can be suppressed.

The first thing you need to do is install the Code Snippets plugin.

After Code Snippets is installed, add a new snippet with the following code:

add_action( 'admin_menu', 'cn_remove_category_admin_menu', 9999 );
function cn_remove_category_admin_menu() {
  remove_submenu_page( 'connections_dashboard', 'connections_categories' );
}
 
add_action( 'cn_metabox', 'cn_remove_category_metabox', 9999 );
function cn_remove_category_metabox() {
  cnMetaboxAPI::remove( 'categorydiv' );
}

This will remove the admin menu item, admin page and remove the category metabox from the add/edit entry admin pages. If you are using the the Form and/or Link extensions, this snippet should also remove the category metabox from their pages.

Lastly go to the Connections : Roles admin page and remove the “Edit Categories” capability from all roles.

All entries would still be added to the “Uncategorized” category but since categories are not being used, that should not be an issue.

There is one area where the category would still show, that would be in the core templates, the templates that come free with Connections. They would still display the “Categories: Uncategorized” text on each entry. Some simple CSS to hide that. Add the following to the theme’s custom CSS area:

.cn_category_label, .cn_category {
  display: none !important;
}

At the time of this writing, none of the commercial templates sold here show the category meta data so nothing needs to be done to alter them.

I’m going to have to end this QuickTip with a disclaimer…

This has not been fully tested so your milage may vary on how effective and thorough this QuickTip will be at fully removing categories from Connections.