Too Many Categories, Too Little Room? Here’s the Fix

I started running out of space in the sidebar. There were almost 50 different Categories which ran well past the first fold.

What to do? What to do? I decided I needed to shorten the list, but then things would be mixed together and lose the effect of having categories in the first place.

 So, I did the next best thing. I added some code to the sidebar which would give me a Drop Down Menu. This way, I would still have all the posts in the proper categories and gain much needed space in the sidebar.

If you would like to set up your Category list with a Drop Down menu (it replaces your get_categories php) like the one in my sidebar…

Here is the code: 

<h2>Categories</h2> 

<ul class=”sellLi”>

<form action=”<?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>” method=”get”>
   <?php wp_dropdown_categories(’show_count=1&hierarchical=1&orderby=name’); ?><br />
   <input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”View” />
   </form>

</ul>

You, of course, can use the <li> (list) function instead of the <ul class…> function if you prefer, depending on the look you want.

I think it works pretty well, what do you think?

Important Update:

If you followed the comments below at all Des Walsh mentioned that he had problems trying to use the code in his Sidebar. I mentioned that he seemed to be using Widgets as opposed to his normal sidebar php.

Php code doesn’t work using Widgets. I did try, but nothing I tried worked… UNTIL I found a Plugin written by Otto that allows the use of php code within a Widget! Go to his post Fun with Widgets and look for the execphp.zip file.

Download it, unzip it, upload it to your server wp-plugins file and you will be able to use the above php code in the Widgets and you will have the same DropDown Menu you see in my Sidebar.

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