What’s new in 2.0.2 ?

• Dutch language updated.
• You can display the sidebar icons as a block again, to do some rollover effect with CSS.
  If you want to see a live example of what I’m talking about, go to http://www.generaalpardon.com/ and move your mouse over the “Rubrieken” on the right :

What’s new in 2.0.1 ?

• I’ve put back the link=false default parameter for the put_cat_icons() function (sorry for deleting it in 2.0)
• Italian language updated

What’s new in 2.0 ?

• The plugin generates valid XHTML. (And Strict XHTML if you don’t use the border parameter)
• You have the choice to use CSS or an image to define the margins of the icons in the sidebar.
• The ALT descriptions are removed. They’re empty, now.
• A bug is corrected : when you made a search in a category, the result returned some posts that displayed only one icon, whereas they belong to several categories.

What’s new in 1.9.9 ?

A “bug” is corrected. I forgot to not localize the widget id…

What’s new in 1.9.8 ?

•  Now the icons are more “SEO friendly” : the description of the ALT attribute of the icon is the category name
• Two new parameters are available :
  align : in order to align the icon when necessary (left, right…),
  border : if true, the result will be a border around the icon. If false (by default) no border around it.
• A little modification was made in the widget by Jean-Christophe Marie
• If you use a plugin to set category to pages (like page category plus), you can use put_cat_icons() to display icon(s) next to the name of the page in the sidebar.
• Better integration in WordPress : in order to have only one location of Category Icons in WordPress 2.3 and 2.5, it’s now located under the Manage menu
• The ‘Manage’ tab is now replaced by ‘Icons’
• An information is displayed if there’s a new version of the plugin (it can be disabled)
• There’s no more link Select and remove. Instead, there is a checkbox to select the icon(s) to be removed. Now, to edit icons, you must click on the category name, like in WordPress 2.5. So the plugin takes the ‘look & feel’ of WordPress 2.5
• The problem with no select or remove links should be fixed : I use another way to check the user role. (Ivan tested levels to check the role)
• The plugin displays informations in the footer in WordPress 2.5.X : 
  - current version of Category Icons plugin
  - links to the following pages : FAQ, troubleshoot, and contact page
  - name of the translator which is linked to his website if he provided an url. (The translator just have to enter these informations in the .po file, under the string translator_name and translator_url) 
• The category_icons.pot file is updated. The languages are not up to date (except Danish & French), but I’m sure the translators will do their best. (@Translators : I need your help, please. I promise to add strings as less as possible. ) 
• The language files are now in a subfolder named languages
• A new language is available : Danish, thank to Henrik Schack, and a language file is missing : dutch, but not for too long, as Vincent promised me the file
• Detects if the default upload folder is readable
• The icons are searched recursively
• Minors corrections of the code (no influence on the behaviour of the plugin)
• The widget has now the ‘look & feel’ of WordPress 2.5 and the localization should work correctly now 
• The widget has now the same version as the plugin, because of a weird behaviour of WordPress server update information
• The RSS feeds can display the category icons (thanks to Bruce for the idea)

 

No CSS support anymore

From now, I won’t have time to help you for CSS problems : it’s time-consuming. I need to focus only on the issues you could have with the plugin. Thank you for your understanding.

What is Category Icons ?

I agree with JTPratt when he wrote :

It’s a beautiful plugin [...] well documented and supported. Everything is configurable from the options menu, you can use it on your index (home) page, post pages, or even your sidebar! You can do icons only, or text and icons, and it comes with a widget for the sidebar.

The cool thing about the plugin is that it gives you ways to do one or multiple category icons, but also a method for putting icons with your categories in the side bar as well ! I’m always very grateful when a good plugin come along !

Or with Ryan Caldwell (performancing.com) :

So the first step in my adventure was to prettify [my pages] a bit. To do this, I downloaded the Category Icons plugin for WordPress. Category Icons allows you to associate a unique image with each of your WordPress categories. By placing a little snippet of code on your category.php theme file, you can then have a big, bold image come up that will make your category pages look better than 90% of the category pages out there.

Sources : JTPRATT’s Blogging Mistakes ( here & here ), Performancing Helping Bloggers Succeed

Latest version installed but WordPress says it can be updated

WordPress says that there is an update for Category Icons Widget, whereas you have the latest version installed :

I don’t know why, but when the WordPress server (api.wordpress.org) is asked to check for updates, it gives this response for the widget :

[category-icons/category_icons-widget.php] => stdClass Object
(
[id] => 1258
[slug] => category-icons
[new_version] => 1.8.6
[url] => http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/category-icons/
[package] => http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/category-icons.zip
)

The version received is 1.8.6 instead of 1.1. So, the solution to get rid of this, is to edit the file category_icons-widget.php and modify the line :

Version: 1.1

to this :

Version: 1.8.6

In the next version of the plugin, it’ll be corrected.

Translations

I’m looking for people interested in translating the plugin (any volunteers for Brazilian, Corean, and Japanese ?). You just have to use the category_icons.pot file with poEdit. Here is a good tutorial.

So if you have a little time to translate the plugin and thus, making it evolve, contact me, please !

To the translators : if you have a web site, you can give me its URL in order to link it to your name. The POT file to translate (to use with poEdit) is included with the Category Icons package (CI Pack).

The following translations are included in the CI pack :

• bg_BG : Bulgarian translation by Kalin Dimitrov
• da_DK : Danish by Henrik Schack
• es_ES /ca : Spanish / Catalan translation by TechnopodMan
• fr_FR : French translation by Brahim Machkouri
• it_IT : Italian translation by Gianni Diurno
• de_DE : German translation by Kristian Bollnow
• nl_NL : Dutch translation by Vincent Sparreboom
• sk : Slovak translation by Samuel Kroslak
• uk_UA : Ukrainian translation by Andrew Senyshyn
• zh_TW : Chinese translation by Hugo Chen
  

If you find any error in the translations, feel free to contact me or the author when possible, please.Others languages : it depends on you to have it added here…

No border around icons

Sometimes, you don’t want to have a border around the icons. Try this.

1. In the posts

In your template file, put the following code if you want no link and no border (most of the time, just ‘link=false’ do the trick) :

get_cat_icon(’class=myicons&link=false’);

with this added in your style.css file :

.myicons {
border: 0px;
}

2. In the sidebar

Use the put_cat_icons() function. Example :

put_cat_icons(wp_list_categories(’echo=0′),’class=myicons’);

But you can also use the widget as an alternative, which is easier, but don’t forget to activate it. You’ll need to enter the following parameters in put_cat_icons() field :

class=myicons

3. Use the border parameter

In your pages and posts :

get_cat_icon('border=false');

In the sidebar :

put_cat_icons(wp_list_categories(’echo=0′),’border=false’);

In the widget parameters:

border=false

“Error in Category Icons : you must deactivate and reactivate this plugin”

Problem :

I’m getting an error message when I get to the Manage Categories page: Error in Category Icons : you must deactivate and reactivate this plugin.

So far, I’ve deactivated and reactivated the plugin, but the problem is not resolved.

Solution :

A very few people encountered this issue. This is when you upgrade from a version older than 1.7 to a new one : there is a new field addedd in the table, named priority, since 1.7, to manage icons priority.

WordPress 2.5

It seems that some of you have no select or remove links in Manage Tab. If that’s the case, read this.

What’s new in 1.8.6 ?

Added : compatibility with qTranslate plugin.

What’s new in 1.8.5 ?

A “bug” is corrected. Actually, it’s more an oversight than a bug : I left a space that could rise an error (header already sent…bla-bla) in the 1.8.4 version, so some plugins could not work properly, so sorry for that.

It’s strongly recommended to upgrade to this version.

What’s new in 1.8.4 ?

• Chinese (by Hugo Chen) & Italian (by Gianni Diurno) translations added
• Template Code improved a bit
• WordPress 2.5 RC-1 friendly

Use get_cat_icon() with echo

If you want to use the get_cat_icon() in a script with an echo, do that :

echo get_cat_icon('echo=false&cat=’.$cat->term_id);

where $cat->term_id is the category ID.

Here is an example. I took the code from a file of WordPress and modified it a little bit to show you. It displays all the categories/subcategories in a table, with their ID, icon, name and description, like in Manage > Categories in the DashBoard, but this time with the icons :

Example :

What’s new in 1.8.3 ?

• German translation updated (thanks Kristian !)
• I forgot to put the spacer.gif in the 1.8.2 version, so, boom, here it is

What’s new in 1.8.2 ?

• New option : size of the space before and/or after the icons in the sidebar.
• French translation is up to date. Other language than english & french needs to be updated. (thanks in advance to the translators)
• A widget is included to display icons in the sidebar, if you prefer to use a widget :

What’s new in 1.8.1 ?

A bug is corrected.

Add icon to pages/subpages

The plugin is capable to not only assign an icon to your posts, but also to your pages and subpages.

To do that, you’ll just need to download the Page Category Plus plugin (linked in the sidebar) and assign a category to your pages/subpages. Then you’ll be able to manage icons for your pages/subpages from the category icons plugin. Don’t forget to add the get_cat_icon() code to your page.php file.