Don't have a category selected by default

[Viper007Bond]

It drives me nuts having to uncheck the box next to my default category when writing a new post if I don't want it in that category.

How about we just don't check any boxes off the bat and only then if the user doesn't pick any categories, we assign it to the default category?

I see no drawback to doing this. Does anyone else?

I'll have a patch shortly probably.

Well, I edited /wp-admin/edit-form-advanced.php, but TortoiseSVN is being retarded and not realizing that I made any changes which means I can't make a patch.

So instead, here's the needed code change (on line 77):

<ul id="categorychecklist"><?php dropdown_categories(get_settings('default_category')); ?></ul></div>

to this:

<ul id="categorychecklist"><?php dropdown_categories(); ?></ul></div>

I tested it and it seems to work fine. :)

I found a trick to get TortoiseSVN to think the file has changed. Rename edit-form-advanced.php to something like edit-form-advanced1.php. Then run an update and tortoiseSVN will restore the file. Delete that file and rename edit-form-advanced1.php back to edit-form-advanced.php and it should show a red exclamation point. Then you can create the patch. That's what I do all the time.

patch from Viper007Bond, "now in upload form!"

I've attached the JS I have used previously to do this.

I have conflicted opinions about what the core should do.

If anyone's interested, ​here is my plugin that uses JavaScript to uncheck the default category, if someone checks another.

JS Plugin

+1

Default category will be selected if the post is published with no category selected... no need to pre-select the default. I often forget to uncheck the default one so my posts go in "Foo and Uncategorized."

(In [4310]) default category starts out unchecked. Props Viper007Bond. fixes #2938

(In [4311]) default category starts out unchecked. Props Viper007Bond. fixes #2938

Now the default category only acts as a last resort when no categories have been defined.

[4406] Saving the default-category behavior change for 2.1