How to: find WordPress category ID

Some themes requires that you fill a form field with a category ID. It may be easy to find a category ID if you’re an advanced WordPres user, but what about beginners? Here’s a very simple manner to find any category ID.

Once you're logged in your WordPress dashboard, go to Manage and then in Categories.
Simply put your mouse cursor on the "edit" link related to the category you want to know the ID and look on your browser's status bar: As you can see on the screenshot below, 1 is the id of the category.

85 Responses

Oct 23 2008 11:31

Thank you for this site. I like this simple tips. Continue in this perfect work. I found many useful tips here.

Oct 23 2008 18:27

@bub: Thanks :o )

Dec 29 2008 08:18

Hey thanks for that pointer.

Jan 03 2009 23:59

This is a little trick that most WordPress users don’t know. It was a wise think to post it in your great blog.

Jan 04 2009 00:02

This is a little trick that most WordPress users don’t know. It was a wise thing to post it in your great blog.

Jan 26 2009 19:13

Hi,

My site is set up to show custom the category and post title in the URL. Is there another way to find the category ID’s? because mine no longer show as part of the URL?

Thanks, Liz

Apr 11 2009 14:45

wauw thanks a lot!
That is what I needed!

Harro

Apr 25 2009 22:41

thanks! this helped with my slider. It was just showing the most recent posts that were right under it. lol

Jun 05 2009 18:31

thanks, unfortunately this doesn’t work in safari. helped solved an issue I was having defining categories. kudos.

Jun 24 2009 13:09

When you’re up at 4am and need info fast, it’s sites like yours that are lifesavers! 3 Cheers and thanks!

Jun 27 2009 01:33

Wow, that simple, thanks!

Aug 14 2009 15:24

Thank you SO MUCH!

Sep 08 2009 18:45

Thanks for the tip. In 2.8.4 you can also click on Posts>Categories to see the category ID. There is also a plugin that shows the IDs. Great site. Keep up the good work.

Sep 10 2009 20:01

Thank you SO SO SO MUCH. I spent over 2 days figuring out how to send post to WordPress using XMLRPC with chosen category. I am struggling because WordPress doesnt like ‘category name’. I have no idea how to find category id until now. Your tips make my day. Thank you .

Oct 13 2009 23:03

You ROCK! Thanks….you saved me!

Nov 18 2009 21:49

you are the best :-)

Nov 19 2009 18:52

I am glad to see so many poeple being helped out by this wonderful site.

Dec 29 2009 08:36

Agreed, when you are up late learning and don’t have time to read every help file it’s sites like this that keep things moving on the development front. Many many Thanks!

Dec 29 2009 22:05

Thanks to the WordPress community. You are always a comment away from help in the great WP community.

Jan 03 2010 20:49

Great! Thank You! :D

Jan 04 2010 19:24

Welcome aboard @Shanti.

Jan 15 2010 16:56

Wow! Thank you so much. This has saved me a bunch of time, and now I can use my theme to it’s fullest!

Jan 15 2010 20:25

@Chris this is what makes the WP community so vibrant. Make sure to pass your learnings to others too.

Jan 16 2010 00:59

Sweet!! Thanks for the quick info and screenshots.!

Jan 18 2010 20:21

It all shows up on your dashboard. Pretty neat software to use. Very handy too.

Jan 21 2010 03:04

totally useful for me..thanks for tips..really appreciate it..

Jan 21 2010 19:02

Thanks very much. You explained in a simple and quick manner

Feb 23 2010 19:13

I knew this but I forgot. Great that you came up in the top of the search for this question. You’d think that they would add this little trick to the codex, but oooooh noooo.

Mar 03 2010 01:43

Thank you!!!!!!!!!! You halped me so much with this information!

Mar 17 2010 23:08

Thank’s a lot – just what I needed!

Mar 20 2010 16:46

Thanks, this valuable piece of info has saved me hours of time.

Apr 10 2010 12:44

Thank you so much, I almost beat my brains out with my keyboard trying to find the category id.

Apr 11 2010 15:19

Thank you, seriously!!

Apr 14 2010 06:35

Thanks jean. That’s really simple trick that almost i miss :)

Apr 15 2010 10:55

Hey It’s a cool trick to find wordpress category ID. Thanks

Apr 20 2010 01:06

THANKS a LOT ! i was looking for that so long ago !

Apr 22 2010 16:52

Thanks,That’s exactly what I find.

Apr 23 2010 21:01

I am glad this made it easy for so many.

Apr 24 2010 02:53

Thanks,i finally find out.

Apr 24 2010 06:22

THANKS! I knew someone smarter than me would have come up with the answer! ;-)

Apr 28 2010 20:59

Themes should be designed to use the is_category() function and accept the form input as an array of category id, slug, or category name.

But still, simple is good too. ;-)

May 01 2010 22:39

WOW!!! i have to hand it to you, you just saved a headache!!! Thanks!

May 06 2010 17:08

Thanks for that. So simple, yet so very helpful.

May 19 2010 09:25

Simple solutions are always the best, Brilliant.

May 27 2010 13:37

Dude, that rocked! Just spent 20 minutes being an idiot looking for the ID. Didn’t think of looking in the URL.

merci bien!

Jun 15 2010 19:33

Perfect little tip. It was exactly what I needed to filter out my guest posts from my blogs homepage using query_posts();

Thanks.

Jun 15 2010 20:15

So simple :)

Jun 17 2010 22:40

Thanks for this very useful and simple tip. I was going crazy changing my permalinks settings back and forth to see IDs in the URL.

Also works for tags and pages.

Also, someone earlier said it doesn’t work in Safari. If it didn’t, it does now.

Jun 21 2010 00:54

Thanks Friend, it was really helpful for me , 5 Star***** Goes to you

Jul 04 2010 00:03

This did not work for me in Chrome, the status bar did not show enough of the URL to include the ID. For everyone else who have thsi problem this is what you do:

Right click the ‘edit’ link and choose the ‘copy link adress’ option. Then paste inot anything that can handle text, like Word. There is the entire URL, ending with the ID number.

Jul 09 2010 15:54

So simple, and yet I spent ages looking for it! Thanks!

Jul 10 2010 07:11

Was helpful..thanks!

Jul 10 2010 15:38

Wow! SO easy! THANK YOU for that!!!

Aug 01 2010 18:20

Thanks for this small tip, actually this small tip made a huge difference to me setting up a theme to work. Onething some people forget is that not everyone knows where to find things.

Keep up the good work

Aug 02 2010 17:06

You just saved me hours of being in agony-city, as Bob Ross would describe it :)
Thanks a lot!

Aug 09 2010 12:22

Thanks heaps for this ultra simple explanation!!!

Aug 12 2010 16:27

I’ve been looking all over the WP documentation for this info, thanks so much. I never would have guessed it was that simple.

Aug 13 2010 06:04

Litle trick but i think still many people dont know about it.. :)

Aug 24 2010 09:39

Wow… this is what I need!!
I was confuse, try some code from wordpress docs like:

but that doesn’t work…
Thank you so much bro… ^^

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