Richard Vencu

<p>This plugin creates and maintains one or multiple hierarchies of blogs in the WPMS network. Options screens appear in network admin dashboard. The blogs hierarchy can be used for several purposes such as:</p>
<ol>
<li>consolidate posts (or latest posts) from descendant blogs only</li>
<li>display a list of descendant blogs or even a tree of blogs from any node</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Other features</strong></p>
<ol>
<li>Hierarchy cannot loop (cannot set as parent one of the descendants or itself)</li>
<li>The main site (blog_id 1) cannot have a parent</li>
<li>Individual blogs may be taken out of hierarchy</li>
<li>Multiple independent hierarchies may be created<br />
Limitations: this plugin is not optimized for large installations. More than 50 blogs can be hard to manage.</li>
</ol>


Network Sites Hierarchy

This plugin creates and maintains one or multiple hierarchies of blogs in the WPMS network.

Eddie Moya

<p>Adds several new templates to the template hierarchy:</p>
<ul>
<li>child-of-category-{slug}.php</li>
<li>category-{slug}.php</li>
<li>child-of-category-{id}.php</li>
<li>category-{term_id}.php</li>
<li>parent-category.php</li>
<li>child-category.php</li>
<li>category.php</li>
<li>archive.php</li>
<li>index.php</li>
</ul>
<p>This greatly extends the native hierarchy of theme templates with regard to<br />
categories. Theme developers can now easily create separate templates for<br />
categories with children, with parents, and children of specific parents.</p>
<p>Additionally makes available four (4) new conditional template tags:</p>
<ul>
<li>is_child_category();</li>
<li>is_parent_category();</li>
<li>is_child_of_category();</li>
<li>is_parent_of_category();</li>
</ul>
<p>These functions are available for use in any theme or plugin as along as this<br />
plugin is active. For detailed documentation of these functions see the<br />
‘Developer Notes: Conditional Tags’ section of this readme file.</p>
<p>Note: This plugin does not actually create parent-category.php, child-category.php<br />
or any of their related templates – rather it modifies the native <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy" rel="nofollow ugc">template hierarchy</a><br />
to allow theme developers to create specific templates for parent and child categories.</p>
<h3>Developer Notes: Template Hierarchy</h3>
<p>What follows are is the modified list of templates available for category pages.<br />
These expand upon the native <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy#Visual_Overview" rel="nofollow ugc">Template Hierarchy</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>child-of-category-{slug}.php</li>
<li>category-{slug}.php</li>
<li>child-of-category-{id}.php</li>
<li>category-{term_id}.php</li>
<li>parent-category.php</li>
<li>child-category.php</li>
<li>category.php</li>
<li>archive.php</li>
<li>index.php</li>
</ul>
<p>The parent and child templates only become available if the current category is<br />
a parent or a child respectively.</p>
<p>Note: This plugin does not actually create parent-category.php, child-category.php<br />
or any of their related templates – rather it modifies the native <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Hierarchy" rel="nofollow ugc">template hierarchy</a><br />
to allow theme developers to create specific templates for parent and child categories.</p>
<h3>Developer Notes: Conditional Tags</h3>
<p>With this plugin comes two additional <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags" rel="nofollow ugc">conditional tags</a><br />
which behave much like any other in WordPress. In a similar fashion to how one<br />
might use <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/is_category" rel="nofollow ugc">is_category()</a> or <a href="https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/cat_is_ancestor_of" rel="nofollow ugc">cat_is_ancestory_of()</a>,<br />
developers may, with this plugin, use the following functions:</p>
<ul>
<li>is_parent_category()</li>
<li>is_child_category()</li>
<li>is_child_of_category()</li>
<li>is_parent_of_category()</li>
</ul>
<h4>Description (part 1)</h4>
<p>The <code>is_parent_category()</code> and <code>is_child_category()</code> conditional tags check if<br />
the page being displayed (or passed as an argument) is of a category that has<br />
children (e.g. is a parent category)  has a parent (is a child), respectively.<br />
They are boolean functions, meaning they return either TRUE or FALSE.</p>
<h4>Usage</h4>
<pre><code><?php is_parent_category( $category ); ?>
<?php is_child_category( $category ); ?>
</code></pre>
<h4>Parameters</h4>
<p>$category (integer/string/object) (optional) Category ID, Category Slug, Category Object. Default: Current Category</p>
<p>Note: Unlike is_category(), these functions will not take arrays of categories or category titles. I’ll work on that. Sorry.</p>
<h4>Return Values</h4>
<p>(boolean) True on success, false on failure.</p>
<h4>Examples</h4>
<pre><code>is_parent_category()
is_child_category()
// When any parent/child category archive page is being displayed

is_parent_category( '9' );
is_child_category( '9' );
// When the archive page for Category 9 is being displayed AND its a parent/child.

is_parent_category( 'blue-cheese' );
is_child_category( 'blue-cheese' );
// When the archive page for the Category with Category Slug "blue-cheese" is being displayed AND its a parent/child.
</code></pre>
<h4>Description (part 2)</h4>
<p>The <code>is_parent_of_category()</code> and <code>is_child_of_category()</code> conditional tags<br />
check if a given category has a parent or child relationship to the current<br />
category or a category passed as its second parameter. They are<br />
boolean functions, meaning they return either TRUE or FALSE.</p>
<h4>Usage</h4>
<pre><code><?php is_parent_of_category($child_category, $parent_category, $direct_descendant); ?>
<?php is_child_of_category($parent_category, $child_category, $direct_descendant);?>
</code></pre>
<h4>Parameters</h4>
<p>(object/string/integer) (required) Category of the would-be parent/child respectively.<br />
(object/string/integer) (optional) Category of the would-be child/parent respectfully. Default: Current Category<br />
(boolean) (optional) Whether or not the child should be a direct child of the parent. Default: True<br />
 *</p>
<h4>Return Values</h4>
<p>(boolean) If the $direct_descendant flag set to true, function returns true if the child is a direct descendant of the parent, if child is no direct it will return false. If $direct_descendant is set to false it will return the same results as cat_is_ancestor_of().</p>
<h4>Examples</h4>
<p>The following function will return True…</p>
<pre><code>is_child_of_category(0);
// When a top level category is being displayed, zero being the parent id value for top level categories (e.g. categories with no parents).

is_child_of_category(12);
// When the current category is a direct child of the category whose ID is '12'.

is_child_of_category('tv-shows')
// When the current category is a direct child of the category with the slug 'tv-shows' (can also be category ID's).

is_child_of_category('tv-shows', 'dexter');
// When the category with slug 'dexter' is a direct child of the category with the slug 'tv-shows' (can also be category ID's). This may come in handy when manipulating categories while not in a category template.

is_child_of_category('tv-shows', 'dexter', false);
// When the category with the slug 'dexter' is a descendant of the category 'tv-shows' at any level. (uses cat_is_ancestor_of())

is_child_of_category('tv-shows', null, false);
// When the current category is a descendant of the 'tv-shows' category at any level. (uses cat_is_ancestor_of())

is_parent_of_category(13);
// When the current category is the direct parent of a category with the ID '13'.

is_parent_of_category('dexter');
// When the current category is the direct parent of the category with the slug 'dexter'.
</code></pre>
<h3>Backward Compatibility</h3>
<p>The changes this plugin makes to the template hierarchy are significantly different<br />
from that in 1.0.5 and before. If you prefer to use that version please find it<br />
in the Older Versions in the WordPress plugins directory, it is tagged as 1.0.5.</p>
<p>While I do not actively support to QA the older version, I would gladly take a<br />
look at any future bugs that crop up and are reported.</p>


Category Template Hierarchy

Adds parent-category.php, child-category.php, and child-category-{slug|id} templates to the hierarchy and conditional tags to match.

Network Sites Hierarchy vs Category Template Hierarchy