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1. nalandainternational
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 4:54 PM

   Hello, all. I was wondering if there were any way that you could change categories to seem more clear. This blog, http://nalandainternational.wordpress.com, requires many categories. Unfortunately, the more posts that are added, the crazier the categories will look.

   So, I'm trying to figure out a way so that only the parent categories show. Then when you click each one, it either goes to the category, or shows its nested categories. Any kind of form of this would be nice. And I don't want it just to be dropdown, because that really doesn't fix anything.

   If anyone knows of anything I can do with the CSS upgrade, please let me know. Thanks!

   The blog I need help with is nalandainternational.wordpress.com.

2. thesacredpath
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 5:13 PM

   There is no way to collapse and expand categories to show or hide child categories, and if you set the categories widget not to show child categories, then the child categories are not shown under the parent category.

3. nalandainternational
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 5:17 PM

   Thanks very much!

4. nalandainternational
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 5:22 PM

   Can you at least change the appearance of the categories so that each point in the heirarchy has a different bullet symbol next to it? I can only do this with html: SQUARE and CIRCLE and so on.

5. thesacredpath
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 5:36 PM

   You can create your own symbol and then declare a "background" as below:

   #primary ul li, #secondary ul li {
   background: transparent url(your image URL here) no-repeat scroll 0 6px;
   }

   You will likely have to tweak the xpos and ypos values (0 6px at the end)

6. thesacredpath
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 5:37 PM

   There isn't anyway that I know of to set different images for different levels.

7. thesacredpath
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 5:40 PM

   Actually you might try this

   #primary ul li, #secondary ul li {
   background: transparent url(your first URL here) no-repeat scroll 0 6px;
   }
   
   #primary ul li li,#secondary ul li li {
   background: transparent url(your second image URL here) no-repeat scroll 0 6px;
   }

   Again you will have to play with xpos and ypos.

8. nalandainternational
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 6:09 PM

   Thanks! I'll play around with it.

9. thesacredpath
   Member
   Jul 23, 2009, 6:29 PM

   I haven't tried the second example with the li li so I don't know if it will work or not. I suspect it will though.

10. izaakmak
    Member
    Jul 23, 2009, 8:19 PM

    Pardon me for jumping in, but I'm confused. I wasn't aware that you could modify the way widgets behave. What gives?

11. thesacredpath
    Member
    Jul 23, 2009, 8:25 PM

    You cannot change functionality. This is simply adding an image for unordered lists for the sidebars. Also, Sandbox is different as things are separated out more in the CSS so that means you have individual control over more page elements. This isn't the same with all themes. Many themes have the ul li stuff lumped in with the text for posts and pages.

12. izaakmak
    Member
    Jul 23, 2009, 8:32 PM

    I'm still confused. Are you saying that there is a way to generate custom category listings using a text widget? Or are you describing some way to modify the appearance of a category widget using custom CSS that requires the upgrade?

    God, I feel so stupid with this stuff that sometimes I can't even figure out how to phrase a question correctly. :-)

13. thesacredpath
    Member
    Jul 23, 2009, 8:42 PM

    No, this is modifying the appearance of the sidebar widgets. Instead of the standard dot (bullet) for the ul li lists in widgets, the above will substitute an image for the standard bullet dot. If you look at the connections theme, you will see the sidebar widgets have a sort of double left-pointing angle bracket at the start of every line in a widget that uses a unordered list for display (not text widgets). We are doing the same thing in the sandbox-10 theme with the above CSS modifications.

    The above changes do require the CSS upgrade and as I said, it will most likely not work in all themes although I have not played around to see if I could somehow get it to work with other themes. There might be a way, I just don't know.

14. izaakmak
    Member
    Jul 23, 2009, 8:50 PM

    Thanks TSP. As usual, you're the man!

    You know, considering how hard it is to keep track of variations from theme to theme, it's no wonder why new ones are so rare. But I do wish I had better choices, or at least more capability for adapting what's available. Can you point me to some reading(s) on the various approaches to mastering the appearance of my blog? Frankly, I'm getting to where it may well be worth it to spend a little and learn a lot!

15. nalandainternational
    Member
    Aug 4, 2009, 6:59 PM

    The primary ul li refers to the category title, whereas ul li li affects every entry underneath. Therefore it affects all the widgets and the catgories widget had each li as the same anyways.

    Thanks for trying, though!

16. devblog
    Member
    Aug 4, 2009, 7:20 PM

    nalandainternational,

    You want to do what I did in my newest skin The subcategories have a different "bullet" (scroll down to categories)

    http://sandboxskins.wordpress.com/

    right?

17. nalandainternational
    Member
    Aug 15, 2009, 6:04 PM

    @Devblog: Yes, exactly! How did you do that?

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