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FV Top Level Categories Changelog

Version 1.9.1 – November 28th, 2019

  • Assing GPL license info

  • Tested with WordPress 5.3

  • Bugfix for AMP category URLs

Version 1.9 – June 1st, 2018

  • Bugfix for AMP category URLs

Version 1.8.2 – May 26th, 2016

  • Self-checking for rewrite rules

Version 1.8.1 – April 7th, 2016

  • Fix for PHP warnings

Version 1.8 – May 22th, 2015

  • Fix for paginated category archives when using custom pagination_base – thanks to odie2!
  • Fix for settings link in plugin row – thanks to odie2!

Version 1.7 – May 12th, 2015

  • Added Polish translation – thanks to maciejka45@gmail.com
  • Added Portuguese translation – thanks to Pedro Mendonça

Version 1.6 – September 19th, 2014

  • Adding support for translations ( Slovak language added )

Version 1.5 – July 22nd, 2014

  • Settings screen added!
  • Category restrictions for post permalinks added! If you use post permalink structure with category in it, you can now restrict which categories will be allowed in the URL. WordPress always picks the category with lowest category ID and that often causes inappropriate categories to show up in URLs – like /featured-content/2014/07/my-post”
  • Or you can simply force only the parent categories to show up in post URLs. So /parent-category/child-category/2014/07/my-post will change to /parent-category/2014/07/my-post
  • If you open the old post URL, proper 301 redirection to the new URL will be used.

Version 1.4

  • fix for WordPress 3.4.1 – category prefix was part of the generated URLs

Version 1.3

  • for for flushing of rewrite rules on plugin activation in WP 3.3

Version 1.2

  • fix for WP 3.3
  • fix for /%categor%/%post-name% permalink structure

Version 1.1.3

  • fix for deeper nested pages

Version 1.1.2

  • fix for /category/child-category redirecting to /child-category page

Version 1.1.1

  • fix for deeper nested categories

Version 1.1

  • fix for WP 3.1

Version 1.0.1

  • original version

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. This works with 3.1! I used a custom permalink structure of /%category%/

    Subcategories seem to work well to.

  2. The sky has fallen! Thank you so much for this quick fix. I use a multisite installation and this is a nightmare. For the most part this new plugin seems to have fixed the issue but %category%/%postname% is still a HUGE issue. Looking forward to this being resolved.

    Thanx again.

    PS. Steps I used to fix:

    1. sitewide deactivate top level categories
    2. change each sites permalinks to default
    3. network activate FV top level categories
    4. change each sites permalinks to month/date

  3. Hello Beachbum,

    you don’t have to change the permalinks back and forth when doing this.

    If you have structure like /month/day/post-name and you deactivate the original plugin, only the category links change (/category/ in front of each category URL). Then you activate our plugin, and the category links are back to what it was before.

    Thanks, Martin

  4. Hi,

    I was using the older plugin and have installed this new one on my syndication. One remark I have is that all the blogs I syndicate are categorized under “all” (how I renamed “Uncategorized” or whatever the default category is) as well as under a child category that is a child of “all”, like “style”, “shops”, etc. The previous plugin used to create my categories as just “style”, “shops”, etc, but this new plugin lists the parent and the child like so “all/style”. I’d rather it could use only the child. Is that possible with the current beta or could it be in the next release ?

    Thank you for stepping up to the plate so quickly with this new udpated version of the plugin.

  5. Thanx Martin

    After a few hours sleep I took a stab at it again on a dev site with /%category%/ and it does work

    So I tried /%category%/%postname%/ and that also seems to work now.

    Is this just a fluke, or maybe because It was a fresh install? Or do I need to go backto sleep?

  7. Hello Beachbum,

    I tested this plugin with /%category%/%postname%/ and it was working fine. But I suggest that you check all the categories to see if it works.

    Thanks, Martin

  9. Thank you. I am tickled to find this replacement plugin. I had been discouraged for a long while that the old plugin had not been updated and am so pleased that (according to early indications) this replacement works fine.

    Thank you very much.

  10. In you have a category /fruit/apple and also a page /computers/apple, opening /fruit/apple category will bring up the /computers/apple page instead………

    That is how the original top level categories worked….

    If you do make a “fix” for that, can you please include this functionality as one of the options. I actually appreciate this functionality and would hate to lose it is TLC never updates, and I am using yours.

    That said, thank you so so so so so so so much for your fix!!!

  11. Hello Lili,

    I checked out your issue with using /style category links instread of /all/style.

    That’s another change in WordPress core. In version 3.0 without Top Level Categories, when you entered a link like /category/style, is displayed the same content as /category/all/style, but it was working. In WordPress 3.1, this address gets automatically redirected to /category/all/style. So when you use our plugin, it’s the same – /style get’s redirected to /all/style.

    A quick and dirty fix would be this one, which tells WordPress, that if it tries to do a redirection to the proper category URL for /style category, which is a child category of /all and it should be /all/style, then it won’t do the redirection. But if you have canonical URL in your header, it will reveal the /all/style URL anyway.

    function tweak_redirect_canonical( $url ) { if( $url == 'example.com/all/style' ) return false; return $url; } add_filter( 'redirect_canonical', 'tweak_redirect_canonical' );

    Please note that this might be dangerous unless you are sure what you are doing, so take it as just a suggestion. I’m not sure how and if to solve that with our plugin yet.

    Thanks, Martin

  12. Hello R.J.,

    keeping the same behavior as the original Top Level Categories plugin was our primary goal. So if we fix this, we will make it as an compatibility option.

    Thanks, Martin

  13. So, on the sites that I used top level categories (and now your plugin) I never used /%postname%/… and then I saw that it doesn’t work for sites that use that permalink structure.

    Are you going to try to work to rectify that issue?

    Thank you…

  14. i had a problem with this. for example, i had a self hosted blog (wordpress.org) with a PAGE titled mydomain.com/music and also a CATEGORY which is mydomain.com/pop/music, for example. and when i click the latter it takes me TO the page ( first url ) as opposed to the POST of the category i need it to take me to. that’s the only problem. any way to fix that ?

  16. thank you so so so so much :) tried it and it’s working perfectly :D you’re the best Martin!!

  18. Glad to see someone picking up the slack. I still find it hard to believe that we need a third party plugin to accomplish this, after all these years. But anyway…

    Just trying out your plugin on a client site that’s under development and I have a couple of issues.

    It seems category indexes only work for the first level category. Meaning, you can’t have nested categories. The index for my Articles category works, but a child category of it does not. Same goes for grandchildren.

    The second issue is with pagination on the top level category index – it simply isn’t working. Page 2 is blank, while there are enough posts to fill 2 pages.

    If I disable your plugin, everything works as it should. Any suggestions?

  19. Hello Matt,

    this must be a conflict with some other plugin, as the child categories work.

    What’s worrying me more, is that your pagination of top level category is also not working.

    We are using both paging and child categories on many sites without any issues.

    Please let us know what plugins and which version of FV Top Level Categories plugin are you using.

    Thanks, Martin

  20. thanks a lot. without the fix it would have been a great problem. thanks once again

  21. Hi Matt, I’m considering trying your plugin and was wondering if you could give me some opinion on the following…

    I’m building a site which might produce a lot of posts, let’s say 750+ per year, plus perhaps a cpl hundred pages. At least. The posts represent a news/magazine “what’s on guide”, ie. they’re date-sensitive as opposed to being a timeless information resource – so my approach to seo is somewhat different than if I were building an information exchange / brochure type site and keyword stuffing.

    Load times will be critical. After much deliberation, I’m edging towards the structure: /%year%%monthnum%%day%/%postname%/ which produces an 8-digit datestamp followed by post name. This, to me, makes more sense than /YYYY/MM/DD/post-name/ – fewer ‘divisions’ in the URL, and without the pseudo directory structure, plus the numerical element is handy for Google News etc.

    Losing the category slug has semantic benefits: ie. mysite.com/music/ as opposed to mysite.com/category/music, but my concern is not to create verbose redirection rules – speed is my focus.

    So my question is: how does your plugin handle the redirection? Are many additional rules required, and what kind of performance hit might I expect in my scenario?

  23. Hi Martin,

    Why has the Category URLs option been this ‘lame excuse’, for all these years? Virtually nobody who would like to use category-structuring wants the “dead”, nonsensical, non-category inserted.

    WordPress takes sustained, consistent flak on this issue. They would dispense with it, if they could. More worrisone yet, there should be a decent little herd of plugins for those who want category URLs, swiping each other’s better code & ideas and evolving. But there isn’t.

    Now – sure enough – Top Level Categories croaks, vindicating my long-time wariness. It so happens that a skilled party was dependent on it, they dropped everything when TLC (and their website(s)) died, and made a crash project of coding a fix.

    I would really like to use a category structured URL, but I need to resolve the weirdness that cloaks this topic.

    Is it the obvious complication of multiple inheritance in WP categories? That an article on quake-damaged Japanese nuclear reactors will be in at least 3 different categories, at different levels in each – and that can go to a half dozen or more, no problem?

    So, where does this article go/belong, for URL purposes? Is that the underlying hang-up with Category URLs? Or is it something else/further?

    Thanks, and congratulations!

    Ted

  24. Hi Everyone,

    We are still working out some bugs with occasional incorrect pages showing up. If anyone has reproducible bugs, please let us know as we’ll be doing a round of work on FV Top Level Categories on Monday and Tuesday.

    Thanks!

  26. Hello Everyone,

    here’s new beta version, before we release it as a stable version on WordPress.org, so if you are interested, you can test it: foliovision.com/downloads/fv-top-level-cats-1.1.3beta.zip

    If fixes issues which occurred when using complicated page structure.

    Little update to the /%category%/%postname%/ structure compatibility: works only for the 1st level categories, the second level won’t work. The plugin works best with classic structures like /year/month/postname

    Thanks, Martin

  27. THANK YOU so much Martin! It took me a while to figure out why my site was broken. I don’t want to ask too much, but perhaps you can work together with Filippe Fortes to better publicize the information. Anyways I’m very grateful for this awesome, and free, fix. -JP

  28. Hi,

    Pre-WP 3.1, our link structure for portfolios was “…/category/portfolio/…”.

    This worked fine and where we were helping people on forums, we would provide links to our solutions.

    After upgrading to WP 301 all of our old incoming links were broken.

    We have upgraded to WP 3.1.1 and have FV Top Level Categories 1.1.3 installed. New links are “…/portfolio/…” and work fine.

    Is there any way of getting the old links to work (the ones with category in the URL)?

    Thanks,

    Niall

  29. Is there any plans for a workaround for websites that use the %postname% slug only? I really hate having the month and year before the post title in the url and would love to not have to use it if possible.

  32. Hello Vicky,

    please provide some examples of what these paged URLs look like and your permalink structure – something like this:

    Category URLs: example.com/category-name/page/2 Permalink structure: /year/month/post-name

    Thanks, Martin

  33. I tried implementing a custom post type, but with this plugin enabled I get a 404 whenever I try to visit a post of that type, presumably because it’s looking for a category instead when there’s no category by that name.

    E.g. site.com/post-type/post

    With FV TLC = 404 Without FV TLC = the post

  34. Is there any way to get your awesome plugin to work on secondary categories? We are trying to keep our URL’s the exact same as an expression engine site and the /category/ slug breaks everything. I love your plugin, but I need that second level.

    We have secondary slugs that aren’t unique, but primary/secondary are unique and there are no page conflicts.

    How does WordPress recognize the URL? if I knew where, perhaps I could help figure out how to enhance your plugin.

    Thanks

  35. With /%category%/%postname% permalinks when i click on posts i get error not found,i switched to /%category%/%postname%.html and now all works.

  36. Hello Hugh,

    we wrote this plugin more like a replacement of existing Top Level Categories in new WordPress versions, with all of its flaws. We haven’t checked compatibility with custom post types yet.

    If you have any ideas about how to implement it, let us know.

    Hello Don Sceifers,

    if your permalink structure is /category/postname, you might have some issues with second level categories, otherwise it should work.

    We will probably try a different approach to creating our rewrite rules in next version. If we do that, there will be a beta version available for you to test as it will might get tricky.

    Thanks, Martin

  38. Hello Kar Yung Tom,

    we try to replicate behavior of the original Top Level Categories which is not working in new WordPress.

    I checked this on our sites and you should not get /category/ in the category feeds. Maybe it’s your permalink structure or other plugins you are using.

    Thanks, Martin

  39. I updated to v 1.1.3 and found that the category is broken. I can only go to ../article/p1/ but when go to p2 (page 2) it shift to about page.That’s sad, it’s happen to all category.

    My structure is /%category%/%postname%/

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