This plugin hasn’t been tested with the latest 3 major releases of WordPress. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.

Show Archive Descriptions

Description

Show Archive Descriptions is a plugin that displays the description for a category on that category’s first archive page. It does the same for tags and author archives.

If you need help with this plugin

If this plugin breaks your site or just flat out does not work, please go to Compatibility and click “Broken” after verifying your WordPress version and the version of the plugin you are using.

Then, create a thread in the Support forum with a description of the issue. Make sure you are using the latest version of WordPress and the plugin before reporting issues, to be sure that the issue is with the current version and not with an older version where the issue may have already been fixed.

Please do not use the Reviews section to report issues or request new features.

Features

  • Display archive descriptions (category, tag, author) with your custom text
  • Create custom titles

Screenshots

  • Plugin settings page
  • Author Archive page with description at the top
  • Category Archive page with description at the top

Installation

  1. Upload plugin file through the WordPress interface.
  2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
  3. Go to Settings » Show Archive Descriptions, configure plugin.
  4. Go to a category archive page, a tag archive page, or an author page (depending on which options you set). See the description at the top of the first page. Make sure each category and tag has a written description.

FAQ

How do I use the plugin?

Go to Settings » Show Archive Descriptions and choose on which pages you would like to see the archive description: Author Pages, Tag Pages, Category pages. A few other options are also available.

I activated the plugin but don’t see anything on the page.

Is the page/post cached?

Did you write a description for the category/tag you are viewing? If you are viewing an author archive, has that author filled in their description in their profile?

If, for example, you select category description to be displayed, and a given category does not have a written description, then nothing will be displayed regardless of what options you have selected. Check the HTML source for a comment saying “No description is available for the current category/tag/author”.

How can I style the output?

There is some basic CSS applied to the description boxes. Look in the plugin’s CSS folder for satd.css to see what CSS is being applied. Viewing the HTML source of the page is also helpful. Add additional CSS to your local stylesheet, and override the existing CSS if you want a different style than the current one.

I don’t want the admin CSS. How do I remove it?

Add this to your functions.php:

remove_action('admin_head', 'insert_satd_admin_css');
How do I use HTML in the descriptions?

Normally, you can’t. Use this plugin to enable HTML in archive descriptions: https://wordpress.org/plugins/allow-html-in-category-descriptions/

Note that you can use HTML in the custom title area of this plugin.

Reviews

September 3, 2016
It works good but I hope it will be updated to the latest version of wordpress. Though its not working with my tags section but making it work for the categories is already a great help.
Read all 1 review

Contributors & Developers

“Show Archive Descriptions” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

Changelog

0.0.8

  • confirmed compatibility with WordPress 4.1
  • fixed minor bug when toggling gravatars

0.0.7

  • updated .pot file and readme

0.0.6

  • minor code optimization
  • CSS compression
  • fixed validation issue
  • option to create custom title with template tags for category or tag name

0.0.5

  • permanent fix for Undefined Index issue
  • admin CSS and page updates
  • you can now enter custom title for archive description

0.0.4

  • code fix

0.0.3

  • updated support tab

0.0.2

  • minor code fix

0.0.1

  • created