Historically, blogs, and thus WordPress, have never had breadcrumbs. There's hardly any theme that has them built in, and though there were some breadcrumb plugins for WordPress, in my opinion, they sucked.
Breadcrumbs are a great utility, both for usability and SEO. They allow people and search engines to easily determine the structure of a domain. I've been telling clients to add breadcrumbs to their sites for as long as I can remember.
For the longest time up till now, I added the breadcrumbs on this blog directly in the theme. As you can imagine, that's not the easiest way of doing this, because if I wanted to change the look of my breadcrumbs, I had to edit 5 or more templates.
Plus, after my WordPress SEO post in which I told people to add breadcrumbs to their theme, and couldn't find an easy working plugin to link to, people have been bugging me to come up with a solution. Well, I've written that plugin!
The breadcrumbs you see on this site are created with my new Yoast Breadcrumbs plugin. It's pretty customizable, but I bet you, as users, will come up with more options than the ones it has now, if you do, let me know in the comments!
Quite a few people have helped me test these breadcrumbs in WordPress, you know who you are, thanks for your help!
Now, go off and download the breadcrumbs plugin!
Hi Joost,
Great plugin!
Just wondering wherabouts to insert the code - I'm not a wordpress master really!
I'm using this template: http://wptemplates.org/?p=143
Thanks,
Skye
I think it is not realy important to use a plugin, this possible without a plugin, only a function in the theme: TUTORIAL
@Skye: I'll have a look and email you
@Frank: true, but most people don't know how to do that, and the code in that tutorial lacks quite a few cases and options that this plugin offers.
OK, i understand your couses.
Hey,
Where to insert that piece of code?
@Frank: :)
@Avaz: where you want the breadcrumb to appear :) usually above your the_content() call.
@Joost: I've tried to insert it into single.php and it gives out such error:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '{' in /home/.tozar/avaz/uzblogger.com/wp-content/themes/default/single.php on line 2
The same with the index.php. I use Default WordPress theme.
Hi Joost
Great idea for a useful plugin!
I get the same error as Avaz mentiones though.
Anders Saugstrup
Hi Joost
Great idea with a breadcrump plugin, but i also get the error that Avaz and Anders mention
Hey all, try the new code, (not the plugin, the insertion code) I missed a closing ) there.
That worked better, thanks :-)
@Joost, thanks!
Now it's working like a charm.
Another question, uhmm... when I tried to replace default separator to → it's not displayin the right arrow, instead it's outputing as a raw text, like: Home → Category → post
What could the be problem?
Hmm Avaz, that's a bug, looking into what's causing that.
oops, it seems your blog parsed the right arrow character. I'll omit ; character in the end to explain:
when I tried to replace default separator to → it's not displayin the right arrow, instead it's outputing as a raw text, like: Home &rarr Category &rarr post
Yes one of the PHP functions I'm using to parse the input there apparently doesn't understand →
Awesome plugin - thanks!
It's working perfectly except for one issue I'm having - I'm using wordpress as a CMS, and my main index page breadcrumb just says "home" in stead of "home >> blog" (ie: front page >> main index).
@john: what's your site? I'd love to have a look and see if I can fix it :)
http://www.howtothaifood.com
Joost,
This is great. Thank you for making this.
But I'm also someone who needs a bit more detail on where to place the code.
I've got it working on my single post page, but I've had problems with my archive template. None of my experiments so far have worked.
Tim
I had breadcrumbs in my theme (bundled plugin) but I soon removed it. I actually like breadcrumbs on sites with plenty of stuff and complex navigation but on wordpress everything is too close and only one click away. It's not much use to know that you are reading post and that you came from home page.
Works like a charm but I agree with Rarst, most blogs don't need this. Of course, those that do - will love it. I have a blog or two that may benefit from it, so keep up the great work.
I'm a big fan of the breadcrumbs navigation. Thank you for creating this plug-in Joost!
Thanks Joost - working really nice :)
If I could suggest one feature... You give the option to return breadcrumb as a string (containing HTML). Why not returning an array "display" => "url"? For expert, that would give more flexbility to customize the breadcrumb.
I.e: on my site, I "hacked" wordpress to manage a gallery of photos. And automatic breadcrumb is not working great :(
http://localhost/photo/3035/
So array would give me this flexibility.
Thanks,
Nicolas
Wondering if there's a way to remove the post/page title from the end of the breadcrumb display? (looks a little redundant on our site.)
Otherwise, is working great. Thanks much for the nifty plugin!
Hi,
I think this plugin would be even better if it supported category parents. The link I provided for my (still under construction) site illustrates the problem. If you look at the URL, it reads domain/category/subcategory/post (I used permalink custom structure with /%category%/%postname%.html to format the URL). The plugin just goes home/subcategory/post.
I tried to get this to work myself, but I'm not much of a programmer. I'm guessing the get_category_parents function might do the trick.
@Nicolas: will think about it :)
@Damon: you're absolutely right! going to dive in to that!
Hi Joost
Great idea for a useful plugin!
For some reason, I stillI get the same error as mentioned above.
I've been following your Wordpress SEO page closely and lost a lot of hair implementing sub par breadcrumb plugins. Thanks for building this i'll try yours. Don't forget to update your article! ;)
Joost,
Great idea, I will be installing shortly. Just curious, how does it work if you put a post in multiple wordpress categories?
Heh, remember reading this tip in the SEO Book way back. Had 'em custom coded into my theme about a year ago, n glad I did. This is gonna be wonderful for other themes though :D.
@Mark: good call, will do that.
@Justin: it will pick one :)
@Gab: glad you like it :)
Very useful plugin. Thx !
Too bad that when a post is in two category, only the first one appears. Perhaps you could add that, as an option, no ?
This premium WP theme by R.Bhavesh has this feature built in.
@Bertrand: no that's quite impossible to do nicely.
@Boris: I'll check it out!
I really love the plugin. Good Job. Quick request/comment - is there any way I can exclude a category from breadcrumbs? I have a "featured" category that keeps showing up for several articles on my site in the breadcrumbs but I use it only for a slideshow on the homepage. I would like to exclude this category from the breadcrumbs as the article also belongs to other categories. Thank.
Hey Joost, thx a million for the plugin. Installation was a breeze. Cheers.
Paul
Hey there -
great article on SEO, got to the breadcrumb bit and although it works for first post all the other posts disappeared and I am getting this error message -
Fatal error: Cannot redeclare bold_or_not() (previously declared in /home/~/plugins/yoast-breadcrumbs/yoast-breadcrumbs.php:122) in /home/~/plugins/yoast-breadcrumbs/yoast-breadcrumbs.php on line 122
please help me! have a few posts with multiple categories and am unsure what you mean by "adapt page.php & single.php" I pasted the code in to those
have removed code for now...
thanks for your time and such an awesome seo guide :)
Hi there Joost!
Cracking plugin and great site, going to have a good read over ALL of it!
One thing I have noticed about the plugin is on a 404 page the current title becomes the latest post.
Have you noticed this? Is there an easy fix or setting that needs changing?
Thanks for any help in advance!
Mark
This premium WordPress theme called WP Remix has this feature built in. Check it out at wpRemix.com
I'm trying to integrate your breadcrumbs with the thesis theme as a hook function. Have you (or anyone) done this? I have not succeded yet..
in my custom_functions.php file
function godobreadcrumbs(){
if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {
yoast_breadcrumb('','');
}
}
add_action('thesis_hook_after_content_box','godobreadcrumbs');
...doesn't work.
This works for me....
//output breadcrumbs
function thesis_yoast_breadcrumbs() {
echo '';
if ( function_exists('yoast_breadcrumb') ) {
yoast_breadcrumb();
}
echo '';
}
add_action('thesis_hook_before_content', 'thesis_yoast_breadcrumbs');
//end breadcrumbs
The code inside the echo statement above got erased. I enclosed the breadcrumbs in div tags for styling purposes, but it's not necessary to include the echo statements.
A huge help. Found the error - the thesis hook I was using referred to an area that was not visible, so my breadcrumbs simply didn't display. All fixed!
@ Joost
About the issue noticed by Avaz Ibragimov in this comment, in two lines (#74 and #98) I changed "htmlentities" into "stripslashes" and it works: all my HTML special chars are now displayed correctly.
I'd like a confirmation from you, if it's the right way. :)
Thank you for this useful plugin, which I'll add into a new theme I'm developing.
I just installed this onto some of my wordpress blogs, but it displays the same name for each different post. Check below on left hand navbar to see what i mean...
Hi!
Great plugin!
Most of my posts are in child categories: is there a way to show parent and child in the breadcrumb?
Thank you?!