Post Catagories

Hi: Dear jim.sharp your site URL?

My apologies. The site URL is LR417.com

Also, Categories has been renamed “Chat topics”. (it’s a working title) I have 3 categories, but since there are not posts, they do not show up. If I create a dummy post, the category for that post will show up on the sidebar.

Hi,
Add this to your child theme’s functions.php

add_filter('widget_categories_args','show_empty_cats_category_widget');
function show_empty_cats_category_widget($args) {
$args['hide_empty'] = 0;
return $args;
}

Hello Menaka,
I can see by reading the text that it looks like it would do the trick. However, I’m afraid we just crossed into an area I know NOTHING about. I am using WordPress through GoDaddy, and I have no knowledge of how to add that to the functions.php (pretty sure that’s one of the files that makes the site work) and I don’t even know what a “child theme” is.

I’m sorry, I thought that maybe there was a setting for this somewhere.

Hi jim.sharp,
I too was once in the same situation. It is okay to cross over from that area.

Start with this
https://docs.presscustomizr.com/article/24-creating-a-child-theme-for-customizr

And I am around for help ??

After a little reading and poking around, I downloaded Childify Me and wp-FileManager. I was able to set up the file manager config by looking at the screenshot on the plugin page and setting the Default Home to ../../ which allowed me to find the Themes folder and the functions.php of my already created and activated Child Theme (did that after I downloaded the Childify Me). I downloaded the functions.php and added your text, then uploaded the file. No change, but I figured out that I neglected to save it as a .php extension. Once I figured that out, I uploaded it again, and Presto change-o. I can now see my empty categories.

Menaka, I thank you very much. With your help I learned a bit of something new tonight. With that, I wish you a fond farewell, as I have to be up for work in 5 hours.

I look forward to learning from you again.
Jim

OK, I didn’t go to bed yet. I was looking at the wp-FileManager screenshot and copied the extensions shown into my config, and now I can edit files without the necessity of download/upload. That’s pretty cool.

Now I’m really going to bed.

Glad that you crossed the mental barrier and moved on to an exciting area.
Good night!
When you are up, would you mind marking this post as resolved?

Thanks for your help