61 Responses to “How To Add WordPress Breadcrumbs Without a Plugin”

1. Tim Clare says:

   November 7, 2011 at 8:42 PM

   Hi Boutros,

   I’m really liking the code that you’ve provided and so good to not have to really on a chunky plugin to do the job.

   One mod that I would like is the option to hide the breadcrumbs on certain pages. Are you able to let me know which part of the code to modify?

   Many thanks :-)

   Tim
   • Boutros AbiChedid says:

     November 8, 2011 at 12:42 PM

     Hi Tim,
     If you want to hide breadcrumb Trail on certain pages. Then you need to modify CODE-2 to the following. I am assuming that you put CODE-2 in your header.php file.
     First you need to find the page ID . If you don´t know how to find the page ID, read my previous tutorial on How To Find the Page ID.

     Let’s assume that you want to exclude 1 page. Then CODE-2 above becomes:

     <?php 
     	//code by BOUTROS ABICHEDID. Adding breadcrumb trail to the WordPress theme, while excluding pages by ID.
     	if (function_exists('wp_bac_breadcrumb')) {
     		//http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_the_ID
     		$id = get_the_ID(); 
     		if ($id !=2){  
     		wp_bac_breadcrumb();
     		} 
     	}
     ?>
     

     If you want to exclude 2 pages, then CODE-2 above becomes (and you got the picture for more pages to exclude)

     <?php 
     	//code by BOUTROS ABICHEDID. Adding breadcrumb trail to the WordPress theme, while excluding pages by ID.
     	if (function_exists('wp_bac_breadcrumb')) {
     		//http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_the_ID
     		$id = get_the_ID(); 
     		if (($id !=2) && ($id !=396)){  
     		wp_bac_breadcrumb();
     		} 
     	}
     ?>
     

     Remember that the number for page IDs are just an example and you need to replace them with your actual page IDs that you obtain from your WordPress Admin.

     Let me know if this helps (or Not).
     Boutros.
     • Tim Clare says:

       November 8, 2011 at 6:43 PM

       Boutros! Perfect!!! Exactly the mod I was needing. Now my site looks perfect!! Thanks so much for your help!

       Tim
2. fringer says:

   August 9, 2011 at 8:19 AM

   And another thing – in my case i had to remove the first and last line in the function code cause it was causing an error.
3. fringer says:

   August 9, 2011 at 7:15 AM

   Hi,

   great code, love doing stuff without a plugin!

   However, I have only one problem – length of the post title, it doesn’t get cut off. There’s a function in your code to cut off the title after 30 characters, but it’s not applied. How come? Any ideas? I’ve done and copied everything exactly like here.
   • Boutros AbiChedid says:

     August 11, 2011 at 6:18 AM

     Hi,
     I am not sure why? in my blog it cuts off the title at 30 characters (or whatever number i set it). You can check longer posts’ titles.
4. PlebisPower says:

   July 20, 2011 at 5:49 PM

   Great code – I really appreciate being able to manually add it in lieu of a plugin!
5. Glenn says:

   May 22, 2011 at 9:53 AM

   A tiny bug in the code:

   if (!is_front_page()) {
   echo ”;
   /* The rest of the function …*/
   }
   echo ”;

   Needs to become :
   if (!is_front_page()) {
   echo ”;
   /* The rest of the function …*/
   echo ”; /*DIV INSIDE FUNCTION*/
   }

   Or else it outputs a lonely ” on the frontpage..
   • Boutros AbiChedid says:

     May 22, 2011 at 8:06 PM

     Thank you Glenn for your Comment:
     Are you talking about the:

     echo ”; //on line 160?

     You are right it should be inside the function, (i.e. It should be one line up before the closing bracket ‘}’ (on line 159. Which I updated the code).

     But frankly it would not have made any difference. I can’t duplicate what you see (Or else it outputs a lonely ” on the frontpage..). The front page is fine in this blog and other blogs where I use the function.

     Boutros.
6. Glenn says:

   May 22, 2011 at 7:21 AM

   Thank you! Great piece of code!
7. Arielle says:

   May 9, 2011 at 9:47 AM

   You have great points. That’s why I love checking out your blog.
8. Jo says:

   April 29, 2011 at 7:02 AM

   That fixed it :) Thank you so much, this really helped me out. I will definitely be using this code on future sites too.

   Jo
9. Jo says:

   April 25, 2011 at 8:37 AM

   Hi, Thank you for providing this code. I have tried 3 or 4 different examples of wordpress breadcrumbs and yours has been the best!

   Only one problem now – if I am viewing a subpage, the page ID of the parent page is being displayed to the left of the link for the parent page, e.g:

   You are here: Home » 32About us » F.O.A Trust (UK) Policies

   Any suggestions on how this could be fixed? Thank you in advance for any help you can give me.

   Jo
   • Boutros AbiChedid says:

     April 25, 2011 at 5:30 PM

     Hi Jo,

     Thank you for noticing that. I am pretty sure, when I tested the code for submenus and other things, that it was working fine in WP version2.9.
     In any case, the fix is quite simple:

     Replace line 128: $post_array = get_post_ancestors(the_ID());

     With: $post_array = get_post_ancestors($post);

     That should do the trick. I fixed the above code accordingly.
     Let me know if it works for you now.
     Boutros.
10. Luishi says:

    March 27, 2011 at 8:34 PM

    Many thanks your code works perfectly on my site.
    • Boutros AbiChedid says:

      March 27, 2011 at 9:28 PM

      You are Welcome Luishi.
11. Tim says:

    March 20, 2011 at 11:49 PM

    Hi there,

    I like the intent here – I am not a coder at all … I have a wordpress template with a plugin that came with it – I like it overall, except it does not show the full path like you do.

    I tried to add in your code to the breadcrumb.php file that came with the widget – it works for the most part, but the delimiters all seem to show up at the end.

    Could I trouble you to take a peek at the site / php file and steer me in the right direction?
    • Boutros says:

      March 21, 2011 at 6:22 AM

      Hi Tim,

      What is your Website’s address? Also what theme you are using so that I could take a look at the source code.

      Thanks,
      Boutros.
12. Metin says:

    February 17, 2011 at 8:13 AM

    Hey, first of all thanks for this fantastic work.
    I Like the way you commented on every single line and explained properly what’s happening.

    I’ve implemented your code to one of wordpress blogs but I didn’t get the exact result I wanted to achieve. Now the thing I want to achieve is that: let’s say there is a post listed under a first level category “Teknik” and two 2nd level categories of teknik “Foto & Video” and “Tester”. I want a breadcrumb in the following fashion:

    Start > Teknik > Foto & Video • Tester > The post title

    However, I couldn’t achieve this with your code. Instead, the breadcrumb generated looks like this – http://yfrog.com/gyffqup

    So any idea on how to achieve this?

    Regards and keep up good work.
    • Boutros AbiChedid says:

      February 17, 2011 at 11:03 AM

      Hi Metin,

      Thank you for your comment. Your example is exactly what I was not able to do when I wrote the code (I tried and tested for several hours). The combinations are endless when you start categorizing a post in top level categories AND in subcategories. What about if a post is ONLY listed in a second level category (a sub-category), what the breadcrumb code will do? (I did not check for that).

      One way to fix this is modify the code to just display the first category in the breadcrumb trail (and forget about the subcategories or any other top level categories). The other way maybe you think about categorizing differently your posts and get rid of the sub-categories all together. Just a thought…

      If you find a solution, please share it here so everybody can learn. Thanks.
      • Roberto says:

        April 12, 2011 at 7:57 AM

        I wanted to do the same as Metin. I seem to have ended up with a situation now where my pages work in the hierarchy I want them to and when it comes to a single post with multiple categories I get them individually bullet pointed.
        eg >> #parentcategory #parentcategory #childcategory #childcategory >> post

        The original implementation of your code resulted in duplicates of the parent, and child categories.

        Ultimately I’d prefer to be able to group parent categories and child categories in this way but my knowledge doesn’t stretch that far.
        eg >> #parent #parent >> #child #child >> post

        Getting to this point has seen me building on the efforts of about five or six of you:
        http://diythemes.com/thesis/rtfm/breadcrumbs-without-plugins/
        http://wordpressskins.org/wordpress-breadcrumbs-without-a-plugin/202/
        http://lianko.com/2010/11/06/tutorial-wordpress-breadcrumbs-without-a-plugin/
        http://thesisthemetools.com/tutorial-easy-breadcrumbs-without-a-plugin
        http://dimox.net/wordpress-breadcrumbs-without-a-plugin

        The code I’m currently using is this:

        function my_breadcrumbs() {
        $delimiter = ‘ » ‘;
        $delimiter1 = ‘ • ‘;
        $main = ‘Home’;
        $maxLength= 30;
        $arc_year = get_the_time(‘Y’);
        $arc_month = get_the_time(‘F’);
        $arc_day = get_the_time(‘d’);
        $arc_day_full = get_the_time(‘l’);
        $url_year = get_year_link($arc_year);
        $url_month = get_month_link($arc_year,$arc_month);

        echo ”;

        global $post, $cat;
        $homeLink = get_option(‘home’);
        echo ‘‘ . $main . ‘‘ . $delimiter;

        if (is_category() || is_single()) {
        echo the_category ($delimiter1);
        if (is_single()) {
        echo ” $delimiter ” ;
        the_title();
        }
        }
        elseif (is_category()) {
        echo ‘Archive Category: “‘ . get_category_parents($cat, true,’ ‘ . $delimiter . ‘ ‘) . ‘”‘ ;
        }

        elseif ( is_tag() ) {
        echo ‘Posts Tagged: “‘ . single_tag_title(“”, false) . ‘”‘;
        }

        elseif ( is_day()) {
        echo ‘‘ . $arc_year . ‘ ‘ . $delimiter . ‘ ‘;
        echo ‘‘ . $arc_month . ‘ ‘ . $delimiter . $arc_day . ‘ (‘ . $arc_day_full . ‘)’;
        }
        elseif ( is_month() ) {
        echo ‘‘ . $arc_year . ‘ ‘ . $delimiter . $arc_month;
        }
        elseif ( is_year() ) {
        echo $arc_year;
        }

        elseif ( is_search() ) {
        echo ‘Search Results for: “‘ . get_search_query() . ‘”‘;
        }

        elseif ( is_page() && !$post->post_parent ) {
        echo get_the_title();
        }

        elseif ( is_page() && $post->post_parent ) {
        $post_array = get_post_ancestors(the_ID());

        krsort($post_array);

        foreach($post_array as $key=>$postid){
        $post_ids = get_post($postid);
        $title = $post_ids->post_title;
        echo ‘‘ . $title . ‘‘ . $delimiter;
        }
        the_title();
        }

        elseif ( is_author() ) {
        global $author;
        $user_info = get_userdata($author);
        echo ‘Archived Article(s) by Author: ‘ . $user_info->display_name ;
        }

        elseif ( is_404() ) {
        echo ‘Error 404 – Not Found.’;
        }
        else {
        }
        echo ”;
        }

        function breadcrumbs() {
        if (is_front_page()) { } else {
        ?><?php
        }
        }
        • Boutros AbiChedid says:

          April 12, 2011 at 4:00 PM

          Thank you Roberto for your comment and sharing your code and all the wonderful additional resources for writing the breadcumb code. Obviously, my code has limitations and I don’t have the time to work on it and improve it.
          Good Luck!
          Boutros.