At the top of the All Posts page inside the WordPress dashboard, there is a drop-down which allows us to filter the posts by category. This option however useful has one glaring limitation: we can only filter posts one category at a time.
The option is therefore unhelpful in scenarios where we may want to show posts under multiple categories or posts contain two or more categories. Fortunately, we can still filter the posts using the same workaround I outlined in filtering WordPress posts by tags.
What’s more, we don’t need to install any plugin to do this but instead only need to edit and load URLs in a specific pattern. Here’s how to go about it.
Filter Posts by Multiple Categories using the URL
Login into your WordPress Dashboard and go to the All Posts page. On your address bar type the URL in the following format and press enter: https://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/edit.php?category_name=category1,category2,category3
This URL will show posts that have ANY of the three categories, as the comma represents an OR operand. Edit the URL appropriately according to the number of categories you need to filter.
To show posts that have two or more categories, replace the comma with a plus: https://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/edit.php?category_name=category1+category2
This URL will ONLY show posts that have both categories, as the plus sign here represents an AND operand.
Filtering Categories with Multiple Words
For any category that has two or more words make sure to separate the individual words using a hyphen this way: https://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/edit.php?category_name=category-one
So for instance, if we need to show all posts that have the category Android or Windows Phone, the URL would look as follows: https://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/edit.php?category_name=Android,Windows-Phone
On the other hand, to show posts that have both the Android and Windows Phone categories, we would load the following URL: https://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/edit.php?category_name=Android+Windows-Phone
I hope that’s clear. If not, please refer to the video tutorial from my YouTube channel that I’ve embedded at the start of the steps. A subscribe to my channel would also be much appreciated!
Hi there,
Can this be done on the frontend?
Hi Richard,
It should be possible to achieve something similar on the frontend with the help of a plugin like Search & Filter. By code I think it can be done using the wp_dropdown_categories function.
Hi Kelvin,
Great article. My issue is with Woocommerce though. Any idea how can I filter products by multiple categories in Woocommerce Dashboard?? I cannot find anything anywhere. You rticle is the closest thing to that.
Hello Vince,
I don’t use Woocommerce on any of my sites so unfortunately I can not confirm whether this works on it. Have you tried using the same logic but with the Woocommerce dashboard urls instead?
Hi Kelvin,
Thank you for your reply. Yes, I did try to use the same logic but unfortunately didn’t work.
If you “hear” around a solution please let me know. In the meantime I will dig deeper the internet underground…
Bye!
Hello Vince,
So I decided to do my tests with a WooCommerce installation, and I’ve found that it works just the same. Example, let’s say you’ve the categories:
One
Two
Three
To filter all products that are in the categories One or Two, then the WooCommerce dashboard URL that you’ll need to load is: https://example.com/wp-admin/edit.php?s&post_status=all&post_type=product&product_cat=one,two
To filter products that have both the category One and Three you’ll use: https://example.com/wp-admin/edit.php?s&post_status=all&post_type=product&product_cat=one+three
Let me know how it goes.
Hey Kelvin,
Thank you so much for your test!!
After your test I gave it another try and I discovered my mistake: I put underscore instead of the dash in the categories names (my categories have many words).
So you are right! It works!! Thank you again!!!
Your post is the only one around that talks about it! Maybe you can index it to get some additional traffic : )
You’re most welcome. The post is actually already indexed.