[Mike]

Hi Steve,

I am working on updating a site which runs connections. I have this custom jquery menu:

 <div id="tabs" style="display: none;">
  <ul>
    
        <?php $i=0;
    foreach ($Cats as $Cat){  $i++; ?>
                <li><a href="#tabs-<?php echo $i; ?>"><?php echo $Cat->name; ?></a></li>
    <?php } ?>

  </ul>

  <?php
$EntryID=$entry->getId();
$ConnectionsHome=get_option('connections_home_page');
$ConnectionsHomeID=$ConnectionsHome['page_id'];
$i=0;
foreach ($Cats as $Cat) {
$i++;
$CatID=$Cat->term_id; ?>

<div id="tabs-<?php echo $i; ?>">
<p><strong>Choose a keyword to view affiliated members</strong></p><br />
<div id="con-search-menu"> 
<ul id="con-cat-list">
<?php
$Rows = $wpdb->get_results("
            SELECT t.name as name, t.term_id as term_id
            FROM " . CN_TERMS_TABLE . " as t
            JOIN " . CN_TERM_TAXONOMY_TABLE . " as tt
            ON 
            t.term_id=tt.term_id
            WHERE tt.parent=$CatID
            ORDER BY name
        "); 
foreach ($Rows as $Row){ ?>
            <li id='<?php echo $Row->term_id; ?>'>
            <a href="<?php echo bloginfo(url); ?>/?page_id=<?php echo $ConnectionsHomeID; ?>&cn-cat=<?php echo $Row->term_id; ?>">
            <?php echo $Row->name; ?>
            </a>
            </li><br>
        <?php }
        ?>
        </ul>
        </div>
        </div>
    <?php } 
?>
</div>
</div>
<br /><br /><br />
</div>

But I am looking for a more elegant way of implementing it for a revamped version of the site. You can view the menu in action here:

The site is being revamped and can be viewed here:

As you can see, I am using the categories widget on the main page, located in a drop-down tab, to display all categories, but it’s a little overwhelming to the user with the amount of categories being used.

The jquery menu is a better solution because it isolates each parent category, so that I can view, insurance types separately from specializations.

The other problem is that this jquery menu is a little difficult to implement, since I have to modify custom page templates.

Have you seen a similar solution to this, or do you know of a more elegant method?

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mike

I think you might have forgotten to paste in the links to the sites… I know I seem to do that all the time. Can you paste the links … I’m visual so that help me with an answer.

[Mike]

That was odd, I noticed that they were removed once I posted it, here they are again without any html:

link1 (old) http://sscit.org/directory

link2 (new): http://creatiflight.com

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mike

Ok, now I see … helps a lot!

Well, the short answer would be that the next major release of Connections and the Widget Pack would address this [eta, couple months]. A couple weeks ago I added my first stab at rewriting the logic for retrieving categories, extremely robust. The purpose, so I can add features to the category widget such as parent and child of options which is exactly what you want.

You could pull that code early and write you own category widget. It is here, the entire cnTerm class:
https://github.com/Connections-Business-Directory/Connections/blob/develop/includes/class.terms.php#L742

You would use cnTerm::get() to retrieve the categories. Just pass in the options that you need.

Since the class is not finished … it is a bit db query intensive since it does not have a caching built in yet.

[Mike]

Thanks Steve, I’ll wait for the final build but this is great news! Your plugin is always improving

[Steven Zahm]

@ Mike

Sounds good … i’ll likely be in version 9.0 aka 0.9 … a little version inflation, I’ve been using point releases as versions, so I’m re-adjusting the scheme as it has been giving the inaccurate perception not much has been going on development wise.

[Mike]

I think that’s a good idea. Honestly I have been secretly considering you a hyper-perfectionist, and I’ve been wondering what could possibly be holding you back from a 1.0 release. Ver.9.0 makes much more sense, and will certainly give new adopters the accurate impression that a lot of work goes into polishing and extending the plugin.

[Dani Weymouth]

I just used a tabs plugin and displayed each category under it’s respective tab. Check out the sandbox at: http://ex1.thesmallbusinessfactory.net/preferred-vendors/.

[Author]

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