BUG: Category becomes read-only

This is related to another thread of mine.

Hi!

This is not a bug but a wanted feature. The default category “uncategorized” is automatically created by WordPress and you can’t delete it. That’s how it works with WordPress alone.

Polylang extends this WordPress feature and adds a default category per language, the “uncategorized-fr” you noticed.

As with WP alone, you can rename the default categories, you can change the slugs (provided that they are unique), or you can choose not to use the default categories.

But the problem is my Announcements category was NOT the Uncategorized category, it’s a category I created later. I already had the built-in Uncategorized category (and it’s French translation Non Classe) that were un-deletable.

Now, mysteriously, the Announcements category has acquired a French translation (Uncategorized with the slug uncategorized-fr) and it has become un-deletable; while my Uncategorized categories have become normal, deletable categories.

There’s something very frustrating going on here!

That’s certainly because you changed your default category. Change it back to Uncategorized.

Well, I tried it again, and it happens when I post by email (using JetPack).

I have created the category Announcement in English only and set it as the default everywhere (in particular in the Settings > Writing > Default category).

Then I submit my post by email to the [email protected] address. This is a self-hosted blog but the Jetpack post-by-email solution goes through WordPress.com.

And then I end up with the situation we have here. Where my Announcement category is now hard-linked to the uncategorized-fr category and I can’t delete it.

You see the results in this gallery. The first picture is the After picture where the categories are messed up. The second picture is the original categories. Look at the info for descriptions (basically what I said here though).

I fixed the categories up but this time also created a French Annonce category to go with my English Announcement category. In my email submission I specified both categories ([category announcement,annonce]).

It seems to work. However there’s no way to update the previous posts to have both the English and the French categories. And I’m pretty sure if I ever edit a post through the web interface it will lose the French category (the post’s language is English – the default language).

I would really, really really need a bit more flexibility in assigning languages to posts and/or categories. Either the post should be “all languages” and I can assign a category from each language; or the category should be “all languages” and posts in that category will show-up no matter what language the user chooses.

Posting by email is the ideal, in-fact the only solution for these users; and posting a generic/universal message is all we need from them – they can’t post separately in each language. And if they forget or incorrectly put the category short-code in their email then I can’t fix it using the web interface.

I hope this provides you the information your require and you can appreciate my frustration in trying to get this to work. Thanks,

Bloddy ‘ell!

I just did some more testing; and the Categories become built-in (i.e.: can’t be deleted) when you change the Settings > Writing > Default Post Category!

Not sure if that’s what causes them to get all mixed up, but that only happened after I posted by email using Jetpack. So I don’t know if that comes from Polylang or Jetpack or something else.

I would still need the flexibility of all languages though for posts and/or categories. It would much better represent the reality of my use case.

Thanks,

I just did some more testing; and the Categories become built-in (i.e.: can’t be deleted) when you change the Settings > Writing > Default Post Category!

Again that’s wanted feature. Polylang will always make sure taht tyou have one default category per language. If you choose an untranslated category, the translation will be created.

I would still need the flexibility of all languages though for posts and/or categories

That’s not planned for near future.