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WPBeginner» Blog» Tutorials» How to Display Child Taxonomy on Parent Taxonomy’s Archive Page

How to Display Child Taxonomy on Parent Taxonomy’s Archive Page

Last updated on January 9th, 2012 by Editorial Staff
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How to Display Child Taxonomy on Parent Taxonomy’s Archive Page

In the past we have shown you how to display subcategories on category pages in WordPress. Recently while working with Custom Taxonomies, we found a need to display child-taxonomies on parent-taxonomies archive page. After doing a bit of research, we didn’t find a single tutorial covering this issue. In this article, we will show you how to display a list of child taxonomies on taxonomies pages.

Open up your custom taxonomy template file which may look like: taxonomy-{taxonomyname}.php and paste the following code where ever you want to display the list:

<?php 
$term = get_term_by( 'slug', get_query_var( 'term' ), get_query_var( 'taxonomy' ) ); 
if ($term->parent == 0) {  
wp_list_categories('taxonomy=YOUR-TAXONOMY-NAME&depth=1&show_count=0
&title_li=&child_of=' . $term->term_id);
} else {
wp_list_categories('taxonomy=YOUR-TAXONOMY-NAME&show_count=0
&title_li=&child_of=' . $term->parent);	
}
?>

Don’t forget to replace YOUR-TAXONOMY-NAME with the name of your taxonomy.

Final Result:

List of Taxonomies

Explanation:

We are using get_term_by to query the information of the current taxonomy by slug. For example if your taxonomy is called topics and you are on a page /topics/nutrition/ then $term variable will pull all the data related to the specific term page that you are on.

In the project we were working on, the topics taxonomy was hierarchical just like categories. So we decided to run a conditional using $term->parent variable. This variable outputs the ID of the parent taxonomy. So if you are on the taxonomy nutrition which is the parent taxonomy, then $term->parent will echo 0. This is why we said if $term->parent == 0 then use wp_list_categories() function to display terms from our custom taxonomy that are child_of the term which page you are on. We accomplished this by using $term->term_id as the child_of variable.

Now if you go to the child taxonomy page, it would have been blank because the $term->parent would no longer equals to 0. On a child taxonomy page, $term->parent outputs the ID of the parent category. So we ran an else statement using the same wp_list_categories() function except we changed $term->term_id to $term->parent.

There you have it. We hope that this helps everyone who was looking for a solution.

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12 Comments

Leave a Reply
  1. Niek says:
    Sep 3, 2015 at 4:47 am

    I know this is an old post but for some reason this code does not work anymore. It works fine listing the child terms on the parent taxonomy term, but on the child term archive page it just says ‘no categories’.

    Maybe you have a fix for this?

    Reply
    • Shaw says:
      Jan 1, 2016 at 4:17 pm

      Yeah, It isn’t working for me either. Did you find a fix for this yet?

      Reply
      • Mark says:
        Jan 7, 2016 at 8:27 pm

        try this one its only shown subcategories in the main category
        get_queried_object_id(),
        ‘taxonomy’ => ‘YOUR-TAXONOY-SLUG’,
        ‘title_li’ => ”,
        );
        wp_list_categories($args);
        ?>

        Reply
      • Mark says:
        Jan 7, 2016 at 8:29 pm

        $args = array(
        ‘parent’ => get_queried_object_id(),
        ‘taxonomy’ => ‘YOUR TAXONOMY NAME’,
        ‘title_li’ => ”,
        );
        wp_list_categories($args);

        Reply
  2. Zulya says:
    Jun 4, 2015 at 1:16 am

    Hello. Thank you for the code. It works.
    But I have a question. How can I hide “title” when hovering the custom taxonomy links. At the moment, the description of each custom taxonomy is displayed in hovering title. Thank you.

    Reply
  3. Susan Clifton says:
    Sep 2, 2013 at 9:05 am

    I’m using the plugin Taxonomy Images so I would like to include that thumbnail in this list. This is my structure:
    Custom post type= Artwork
    hierarchical taxonomy= Artist Name

    I’m looking for each artist name to up with the thumbnail as a grid list to view artwork.
    I created a taxonomy template for the single artist page, no problem but can’t figure out how to do a list of artists. This solution almost works for me. But I’m getting each artist multiple times in this list.

    Hint…Hint ;)

    Reply
    • Editorial Staff says:
      Sep 3, 2013 at 3:15 pm

      Hey Susan,

      Not sure why you are getting each artist multiple times. As for Taxonomy Images, Michael Fields have a bunch of queries on the plugins page.

      Reply
  4. Jake says:
    Jan 9, 2013 at 12:55 am

    Almost exactly what I was looking for. I however have one problem: when my Taxonomy has no children I get a single list item that says “No Categories”. What should I do to just display nothing if there are no children?

    Much appreciated!

    Reply
  5. James says:
    Dec 5, 2012 at 12:38 pm

    Had been googling for a while for a solution like this. Cheers

    Reply
  6. Rasha says:
    Aug 16, 2012 at 5:19 am

    Can it show thumbnail also for child terms ??
    Thanks

    Reply
  7. Rottenpeach_com says:
    Jan 9, 2012 at 2:32 pm

    @syedbalkhi I confused Taxonomy with Taxidermy…#TheAwkwardMoment

    Reply
    • syedbalkhi says:
      Jan 9, 2012 at 3:19 pm

      @rottenpeach_com lol

      Reply

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