This simple theme component allows for hiding the lock badge icons for selected secure categories in the drop-down category selectors, header breadcrumbs, navigation sidebar menu and corresponding category chat channels.
In the theme’s categories and channels field, which is the only setting, use the category slug and category ID of each secure category (and chat channel) you want to hide the lock icon for, where the URL of the category is your-forum-address/c/category-slug/ID (you can look in your browser’s address bar from the secured category). Separate the category slug and ID with a semicolon.
For example, https://exampleforum.org/c/vip/6 would have category slug “vip” and category ID = 6 and in the setting category field you would input “vip;6” as one of the list items. Chat channel must be linked to the category and channel slug must be the same as it’s corresponding category. (See screenshots below)
For sub-categories, the sub-category will inherit the parent category if the latter is hidden. However, you can a hide lock icon in secure sub-categories themselves by separating the parent category and sub-category slugs with a forward slash like parentcategory-slug/subcategory-slug (ie: boats/motorboats/8 ) and use the sub-category ID in the settings field, separated by a semicolon, like category/subcategory;subcategoryID.
To-do: Use category list_type setting. Add setting for hiding lock icon for all secured categories, and setting to hide lock icon of search results from secured categories.
Thanks to @Arkshine and @Don for some of the code snippets.
Nice! I’ve hacked a solution together for this a few times on various sites - brilliant to have it as a configurable theme component. You’ve got a knack for churning out some really useful customisations!!
Just checking - is it possible to use a Category selector instead of specifying each slug and ID? I would have thought that would be more durable for those like me who occasionally rename / move categories. Also, it might help with managing subcategories.
The lock icons are actually a bit tricky to hide in some places, that’s why the category ID is also required. I’m trying to figure out doing it also for search results but singling out select categories in the results seems near impossible.
oh good point. Can separate the slugs with a forward slash like category-slug/subcategory-slug (ie: boats/motorboats;8) and just use the subcategory ID. But a subcategory will inherit the parent category if you are hiding the lock icon there.
I will add this to the OP.
Yea I actually started developing it this way but I was getting results that were not what I expected. I will continue to work this method out because it is preferred for the reasons you describe. Thanks for the great feedback Nathan, I appreciate it.
I have updated the component for some of the field descriptions with corrections and more information about subcategories, and also edited the OP with the correct instructions for using subcategories.
Excellent theme component that was created in response to a question I had on another topic here. Can’t thank you enough for putting in the time to help us non-CSS experts manage their forum more effectively.
Ooh, thanks for this. I find all of those icons to be more distracting than informative — especially because they can mean so many different things in terms of actual access.
