PluginZilla

Everyone wants to make their blog as unique as possible. This either means you hire a designer and have them slave over every detail, or you take it upon yourself to add your own unique touch. This next plugin will help you add a few little details, which could mean a world of difference to your blog.

The Category Icons plugin, in a nutshell, helps you display icons in your post title. For instance, since this post is in the “Post Plugins” category, and if I had the plugin installed, then the relevant category icon would display to the left of the post title above. Even in the RSS feed!

A quick example I did on this blog to test it out, took me like a few minutes to get this up.

Note - *The installation notes say that the “Category Icons” settings shows up in the “Options” tab, however in WordPress 2.5 it shows up in the “Manage” tab.*

So, What can you do with this plugin?

• Displays icons in the categories list, in the sidebar, with or without the category name, with or without the help of the widget (you must activate to use it).
• Generates pure html code of the img tag, so it gives you the freedom of doing what you want to with the icons (customizing via CSS or not).
• You can specify your own file paths for your icons, or just upload them to the default location i.e wp-content/uploads/ on your blog. FTP access is required here. Not quite sure if it would work if the icons are stored in an off site location.
• You can have more than one icon display - don’t know why you would want that, but oh well.
• Set positioning of the icons in the sidebar, and set margin spacing around the icons {if you don’t want them to stick to the title}

First, though you will need some icons, go ahead and search for some free ones on the web or use any custom ones you may have. Then…

1. Go to the “Icons” tab under “Category Icons” and click on your categories.
2. Then you will be asked to choose the icons you want to use.
3. Then click “Select Icons” and that’s it.

NOW, you need to enter the code in your theme’s template files, if it doesn’t do it automatically. Don’t worry it’s not that hard. The author was kind enough to provide very friendly directions under the “Template Code” area showing exactly what to do.

Simply take the code snippet provided, open up your themes relevant template files from the “Presentation” or “Design” tab and paste the code as per the directions, then hit “Update File” and you should be set.

I was hoping that there would have been a default set of icons to use, even from FamFamFam! But then I thought with the enormous amount of users it would be hard to include a selection to fit all, plus it would unnecessarily bloat up the plugin package. So it’s OK, he gets a lucky break.

This is a very minimal, but yet striking, change that you can do to your blog by yourself and best of all, it’s free! The web is full of free icon resources too, I’m sure you will be able to find some that matches the categories that you blog about.

Even if you end up spending some cash for an icon set, the change to your blog will be well worth it.

Plugin Details

Download: Category Icons

Author: Brahim Machkouri

Screenshot:

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