Implemented Multi-Category Menu Item

Hey Ruud,

I'd like to make a suggestion for a new feature - the possibility to create a menu item using multiple categories. It will just list articles (layout as per options when picking 1 category blog) from different categories with pagination.

Thanks

Hi,

Thanks for the feature request, will have a look at if and how this is possible.

To be continued

Hi Daclina,

I just investigated this request and am glad that I can tell you that this is already possible (out-of-the-joomla-box).
Because Joomla has a requirement that an article can only be assigned to one category (unlike for example wp where an article can be assigned to more categories).

Sometimes this requirement is to limiting as an article adds value to more then one category.

What the Joomla community created to circumvent this limitation is.... tags

A article can only be member of one category, but can have 'unlimited' tags.

and the good news is: there is a menu item: Tags > Tagged Items where you can create an overview of all articles with the selected tags

So what you need to do to utilize this feature is: create a tag for every category. Then in the article manager select all articles in category X, press the batch button and configure to add Tag X

That's it.

does this do what you requested?

Thanks for looking into this. Unfortunately I have considered this but it isn't ideal.

The issue with tags is that it is a manual process that you need to make sure that you create special tags that you can then assign to menus. You xcan batch older content but if you use a lot of contributors is isn't an ideal and full proof process. You can do it with some auto-tagging pluggins in a way, but to achieve the overall result ... it just seems messy in all honesty.

There is an alternative and potentially cleaner way to do this other than tags - you create a main category and add the categories you want grouped as subcategories, then in the options select the menu item to show all items in subcategories. In theory is sounds great, but it messes around with URL structure as in I only want to see the categories I want in the url and not the main subcategory created to house the subcategories. In this scenario it will show both in the URL, which is not something I want to do.

I refer to K2 in this because it is an out of the box feature where you can create menu items based on multiple categories (or exclude multiple categories and include the rest). It doesn't change the URL structure because the articles belong to one category and this is a simple list of items belonging to one or another category.

Okay I understand and I see the risk of 'missing' content because not all authors are disciplined as we are :whistle:

I need to investigate further to see if I can add this with a simple change. What I do not want to do is copy the complete joomla 'category blog' part and then change it to be able to select more then one category.

Copying means maintenance as changes to the Joomla! core for the Category blog then also need to be applied to ochblog Category Blog code.

The power of ochBlog is that it builds upon Joomla! not (like other solutions) duplicates functionality.

Maybe I can propose a code change to Joomla, so this could be an improvement for J3.9, but as said: I need to investigate and discuss this.

Time is precious and can only be spend once

btw. New version of ochBlog will be released soon with a cool new feature: ochFollowme.
With this Joomla Custom User Field you can have the author add links to their social media profiles. These links can then be displayed in their aboutprofile page and in the author info.

current support for twitter, facebook, instagram, linkedin, googleplus, youtube, pinterest, tumblr, snapchat, reddit, flickr, medium, soundcloud, skype, vimeo, github, slideshare, blogger, stumbleupon, aboutme and vk

you can see it in action here: onlinecommunityhub.nl/author/ruud and in my author info in my blogs


the co-authors plugin is also on my todo list (near the top )

Okay, so did a deep dive into the Joomla Category Blog menu item.
Sorry to say that it is not possible as a 'fix' for how this is currently implemented.
The whole setup as it is implemented now is to only have one category, when enabling multiple it 'crashes' the Joomla router as this does not know what to do with the multiple ID's.

As said: the way to pursue this functionality is via tags.
I will make a note on my todo list, but this will not have high priority

Just as a side note:
The featured overview can also possibly help you out.
What this view does is list all articles that are 'featured' where you can configure multiple categories.
So instead of tagging all the articles, you only have to make them featured and they will show up in the menu item (when in one of the selected categories)

Just released version 0.4.0 with the new 'Articleslist' view
closing this thread: if there are any issues or questions please create a new topic.