[Plugin: My Category Order] Plugin doesn't work. that simple

I can’t control what every single theme does. I do my best to support themes that use standardized practices. In the world of WP 3.0 that would mean easy widget support. Just having to swap a widget is hardly an “inherent problem”. If your theme doesn’t support widgets or use a widget for displaying your categories, then take it up with your theme author.

I want to order the categories in specific ways, but the widget seems to break if I try to change any of its settings in the widget page. It will work with the My Category Order changes for the category order and sub category order, but if I try to use the ID setting and place ID# numbers in the include/exclude tree then I get the No Categories display. If I use the My Order,ID or Slug settings it will work until I put something in the other template boxes.
I realize that sometimes there is a theme issue with certain plugins, but I have had no success with these settings in Twenty Ten either.
I am using the ID#’s only separated by commas. Is this not correct?

Context,

include and exclude is all handled by WordPress, the widget just passes the parameters to the wp_list_categories function. Yes, you use the ID’s (found in the URL when you edit a category) separated by commas.

Are you putting stuff in both include and exclude? That can lead to some strange behavior if I remember correctly.

Here is what I would like the plugin to do.
I am assembling a new WP site for a client and I am logging all of the ID#’s that are assigned to Pages/Posts/Categories/Sub Categories and so on.
I realized that using the My Order function will only allow me to arrange Category/Sub Category and I cannot turn the sub category display on or off.
When I try to use the ID method it works only to Include ID#’s and I cannot get the Exclude function to work at the same time. This you say might be an issue to mix the two arguments.
However I cannot get the Display Child function to work on its’ own either. It displays No categories when I try it.
Basically I would to use the Widget in a number of different ways, in different locations, on the site but I need to figure out why it lacks functionality for me.
Thanks

You can control if subcategories are displayed with the Depth setting. Set to 1 it will display the top level of wherever your category tree starts.

With Child Of you can narrow down the tree real quick by putting in the parent ID. Those children that are returned become the “top level”. If you use Include and Exclude with Child Of, then you can only put in ID’s of the children. I tried it and putting any other ID caused it to say No Categories.

It’s finicky but should be able to do anything you need. Maybe a more concrete example off the site would help.

Hi there
What’s the latest version of this plugin??? Is it compatible qith Woerdpress 3.2.1??? MY CATEGORY is working fine in one of my blogs (built with the Platform theme) but it does not work with a new one I am also building with Platform… In this one categories simply don’t show in the published blog… I have ticked all the relevant boxes in the widget, but still categories won’t show… What happens?

Thanks for your help… I am new and for the moment I can’t code…