Display styled popular tag buttons on any page or archive. Full visual control from the admin. Works via shortcode, automatic placement, or theme func …

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Abidemi Kusimo

Category Popular Tags gives you a fully styled set of tag buttons that can appear anywhere on your WordPress site — category archives, tag archives, author archives, individual pages, WooCommerce product category pages, or embedded directly in post content via shortcode.
There are two types of buttons you can create:
<ul>
<li>
Auto Popular Tags — the plugin queries your posts and surfaces the most-used tags for a given category, ordered by frequency. Drop the shortcode anywhere and it works: on a category archive it shows that category’s popular tags; on any other page it automatically falls back to your site-wide most popular tags.
</li>
<li>
Custom Buttons — build a hand-picked set of tag buttons with your own labels, URLs, and optional icon images. Drag them into any order and use the generated shortcode to place them exactly where you want.
</li>
</ul>
Both button types share the same global style system, so one set of controls governs the look of everything: colours, hover states, font size, weight, border radius, padding, icon size, column count, gap, box shadow, and text transform.
<h4>Admin Panel — Four Tabs</h4>
Tab 1 — Custom Buttons
Manually create and manage a list of styled buttons. Each row has:
<ul>
<li>An optional icon image (uploaded via the WordPress media library)</li>
<li>A text label</li>
<li>A URL</li>
</ul>
Rows are drag-and-drop reorderable. Once saved, the tab shows a ready-to-copy shortcode. You can also display a specific subset of buttons in any order using <code>[cpt_buttons ids="3,1,2"]</code>.
Tab 2 — Auto Popular Tags
Configure the automatic tag discovery:
<ul>
<li>Set the section title shown above the buttons</li>
<li>Set the default number of tags to display</li>
<li>Toggle sequential number badges on each button</li>
<li>Choose the cache duration (1 hour, 12 hours, 1 day, or 1 week)</li>
</ul>
A live preview section lets you pick any category from a dropdown and see exactly how the tags will look on the front end — before saving anything. After loading a preview the tab shows you a category-specific shortcode (e.g. <code>[popular_category_tags category_id="3"]</code>) ready to copy.
Tab 3 — Style
Every visual property of the buttons is controlled here:
<ul>
<li>Button background colour and hover background colour</li>
<li>Font colour and hover font colour</li>
<li>Border colour, border width, and border radius</li>
<li>Font size, font weight, and text transform (none / uppercase / capitalize)</li>
<li>Padding (top/bottom and left/right independently)</li>
<li>Icon size and the gap between the icon and the label text</li>
<li>Gap between buttons on desktop and on mobile independently</li>
<li>Column count on desktop (auto-fit, 1, 2, 3, or 4) and on mobile (1 or 2)</li>
<li>Box shadow toggle</li>
</ul>
A real-time preview updates as you drag sliders and pick colours — no save required to see the effect.
Tab 4 — Placement
Control where tags appear automatically, without touching any shortcode or theme file:
<ul>
<li>Category archives — before posts, after posts, both, or after the page title (a JavaScript-based injection that works on any theme)</li>
<li>Tag archives — show site-wide popular tags on tag archive pages</li>
<li>Author archives — show site-wide popular tags on author archive pages</li>
<li>Exclude categories — prevent automatic display on specific categories</li>
<li>WooCommerce (shown only when WooCommerce is active) — auto-display before or after products on product category pages</li>
</ul>
<h4>Shortcodes</h4>
Auto popular tags — simplest form: 
 [popular_category_tags]
Used on a category archive → shows popular tags for that category. 
Used anywhere else → shows your site-wide most popular tags automatically.
With specific category: 
 [popular_category_tags category_id=”5″]
With count and custom title: 
 [popular_category_tags count=”8″ category_id=”5″ title=”Browse by Topic”]
All available attributes:
<ul>
<li><code>category_id</code> — the ID of the category to pull tags from. Omit to auto-detect or fall back to site-wide.</li>
<li><code>count</code> — number of tags to show. Omit to use the admin default.</li>
<li><code>title</code> — override the section heading for this instance only.</li>
<li><code>verbose</code> — set to <code>1</code> to output HTML comments useful for debugging.</li>
</ul>
Custom curated buttons: 
 [cpt_buttons]
All buttons in saved order.
<pre><code>[cpt_buttons ids="3,1,2"]
</code></pre>
Specific buttons in a specific order.
<h4>Template Functions</h4>
For theme developers who prefer PHP over shortcodes:
<pre><code>cpt_popular_tags( $args )
</code></pre>
Renders auto popular tags. Accepts an optional array to override admin defaults:
<pre><code>cpt_popular_tags( array(
 'category_id' => 5,
 'count' => 6,
 'title' => 'Related Topics',
) );

cpt_custom_buttons( $args )
</code></pre>
Renders the custom buttons created in Tab 1. Accepts an optional <code>ids</code> array to filter and reorder:
<pre><code>cpt_custom_buttons( array( 'ids' => array( 3, 1, 2 ) ) );
</code></pre>
<h4>Backwards Compatibility</h4>
If you were using the plugin before version 2.0, nothing breaks:
<ul>
<li><code>[popular_category_tags]</code> and all its original attributes (<code>count</code>, <code>category_id</code>, <code>category_name</code>, <code>type</code>) work exactly as before.</li>
<li>The legacy theme function <code>cush_category_popular_tag()</code> is still available as an alias for <code>cpt_popular_tags()</code>.</li>
<li>Existing settings are automatically migrated on upgrade — no manual action required.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Credit</h4>
Popular tag query logic originally inspired by: 
https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/261617/display-most-popular-tags-of-category

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