[Jeffrey]

Using cMap on a site under construction but I’m not clear on how the Category Dropdown functions.

I have my Connections entries arranged in standard hierarchical structure:
Region 1 > City A, City B, etc. > City A Dining, City A Lodging, etc.
On all pages, the Category Dropdown currently displays ALL entries from the site in this same hierarchical structure, which is good.

I would expect (perhaps mistakenly) that when viewing say, the “City A Dining” page, and then selecting an entry from the Dropdown, to jump to the selected Category page (ex.: “City B Lodging”).

Instead, the results state: “You are searching within category(ies): “City B Lodging” >> “City A Dining”” and “No results.” This of course is because NO “City A Dining” entries exist within the “City B Lodging” category.

It seems the Category Dropdown feature restricts results to ONLY those WITHIN the current category page? Is there any way to allow users to jump to another category entirely?

Thanks!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Jeffrey

I’ve read this a few times and if I am understanding correctly you created several WP pages and added the [connections] shortcode on each of these pages. Is that correct? And on each of these pages you used the category shortcode option. Is that correct?

If both my assumptions are correct… Connections shortcodes has no knowledge of other instances of the shortcode and the options used to configure it. So, there is no way for it to know that when selecting a category that it should actually redirect the user to another page and display the selected category. Does that make sense?

You could use the enable_category_by_root_parent cMap shortcode option (more here) to limit the display of the categories that should be displayed in the drop down so the user can only choose from the categories that the page was limited to with the category shortcode option.

Another option which is a bit more complex, you could add a code snippet that will let Connections know if x-category was selected that it should redirect to y-page. I’ve written up a QuickTip which explains how to setup this up in detail.

Hope that helps, let me know.

[Jeffrey]

Sorry for the convoluted questions, but I’m probably misunderstanding how the Categories Dropdown is designed to function …

It seems the Dropdown menu offers ALL Categories, even though the results are restricted only to those WITHIN the current page/category. So it can be used only to NARROW the current results, but cannot be used to BROADEN them, or to ‘jump’ up in the overall hierarchy?

Seems like the enable_category_by_root_parent is the best option for this case … Will try that or remove the Dropdown entirely.

Thanks!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Jeffrey

The category select is designed to show all with the exception to hide empty categories and excluded categories. You are manually limiting the scope of the entries that can be returned by using the category shortcode option… maybe the confusion comes from this… you are not setting what categories to display in the drop down by using the category shortcode option, rather you are limiting the query to the entries which can be returned by the category they have been assigned.

Since you are choosing to manually restrict which categories can be displayed on separate pages of your site, then you have to also limit which categories should be displayed in the drop down by either excluding them as options or using the limit to root parent as I suggested in my last reply.

Make sense???

I’ll explain the decisions… This was designed for the 99% of users. They are going to add the shortcode to a single page and let the user choose from the categories, that’s about it. But I also choose to allow the 1% to create far more complex configurations. If you’re going to manually split categories out on separate WordPress pages there is going to be a bit more configuration to the process.

I really hope this helps clear up functionality and not make it muddier!

[Jeffrey]

Ah, makes perfect sense! I see now how nearly all users would use it that way.

Because of the nature of this site, my particular application calls for individual “City” pages with Entries limited to that respective city, so I presently have no need for a site-wide directory. Which probably also explains why I keep getting the reminder: “The Connections directory home page has not been set.”

But I just did a little experiment using it as intended and it of course works great; I may even find a use for that later!

Again, thanks for the explanation and thanks for the helpful, responsive support!

[Steven Zahm]

@ Jeffrey

You can still do what you want, you just need to exclude the categories that should not be displayed or use the enable_category_by_root_parent if that will work for your category structure. I suggest the later method because it is the easiest and what most other users who need setup like your use.

Alternatively, you could use the option in the QuickTip. This method was developed specifically for another user who wanted to split categories but required that some be redirected to specific pages. Honestly, when the other user described what they wanted I didn’t really see why that would be useful… but, looking at it in action, it worked very well and accomplished his functionality goals.

See this page. Select Academia from the drop down. Upon selection, this actually redirected to a new page, look at the URL. On this page it was setup to display another set of specific categories. The site is still being worked on so there is not a whole lot of data to see it in action but it should show enough to see why this was wanted for their site.

I guess is what I trying to say… I develop for the 99% while still giving that 1% the options they need to create rather complex configurations.

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