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Free Plugin by Fernando Briano v0.5

List categories

Simple plugin to display categories in any post or page with a shortcode.

List categories

The facts

Rating
4.5★ from 15
Active installs
5k+
Price
Free
Last updated
15 May 2025
Added
Jun 2014
Requires WP
3.3
Tested up to
WP 6.8.8
Downloads
77,146

Our analysis

AI-assisted

List Categories is a WordPress plugin that allows you to display categories in posts or pages using a shortcode. It acts as an interface to the wp_list_categories function, enabling you to customise how categories are presented based on various parameters.

You can use this plugin to show categories ordered by post count or to list tags and other taxonomies. It is suitable for users who want to enhance their site's navigation by displaying categories in a structured format.

Best for: This plugin is best for WordPress users looking to display categories and tags in their content.

What it does well

  • Displays categories using a shortcode
  • Customisable with various parameters
  • Supports listing tags and other taxonomies
  • Renders categories in a hierarchical format
  • No SQL LIMIT imposed on displayed categories

Where it falls short

  • Limited information on styling options
  • No specific examples of use cases provided

Verdict

List Categories offers a straightforward solution for displaying categories with customisation options. It may suit those who want to improve category visibility on their site.

From the developer

Fernando Briano's own description of List categories, lightly tidied.

Simple plugin to display categories in any post or page with a shortcode. It’s basically a shortcode API interface to the wp_list_categories WordPress function. This means given any of the parameters accepted by the function, you can pass it in as a shortcode parameter to the categories shortcode.

Usage:

[categories orderby=count]

Will display links to all the categories and order them by number of posts in each category.

You can also list tags or any other WordPress taxonomy. You need to pass a value to the taxonomy parameter. For example to list tags: [categories taxonomy=post_tag title_li="Tags"].
By default, the usage shows:

  • No link to all categories
  • Sorts the list of Categories by the Category name in ascending order
  • Displayed in an unordered list style
  • Does not show the post count
  • Displays only Categories with posts
  • Sets the title attribute to the Category Description
  • Is not restricted to the child_of any Category
  • No feed or feed image used
  • Does not exclude any Category and includes all Categories
  • Displays the active Category with the CSS Class-Suffix ‘ current-cat’
  • Shows the Categories in hierarchical indented fashion
  • Display Category as the heading over the list
  • No SQL LIMIT is imposed (‘number’ => 0 is not shown above)
  • Displays (echos) the categories
  • No limit to depth
  • All categories.
  • The list is rendered using a new walker object of the the Walker_Category class

See wp_list_categories for usage.

Markup and Styling of Category Lists

Taken from the wp_list_categories official documentation.

By default, wp_list_categories() generates nested unordered lists (ul) within a single list item (li) titled “Categories”.

You can remove the outermost item and list by setting the title_li parameter to an empty string. You’ll need to wrap the output in an ordered list (ol) or unordered list yourself (see the examples above). If you don’t want list output at all, set the style parameter to none.

You can style the output with these CSS selectors :

li.categories { ... }  /* outermost list item */
li.cat-item { ... }
li.cat-item-7 { ... }  /* category ID #7, etc */
li.current-cat { ... }
li.current-cat-parent { ... }
ul.children { ... }

For instance, you can remove the bullet points next to each category with:

.cat-item {
  list-style-type: none
}

Show categories list in columns

Read the full description on the official page →

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