WordPress provides a template tag, wp_dropdown_categories, that inserts a drop-down list (the HTML <select> element) of categories, where the value of each item is the ID from the database. This works fine if you are not using rewrite rules (AKA “pretty links”) – you can construct a URL using the value (?cat=[number]). However, if you use any sort of rewrite rules, this does not work. I recently converted my personal site, which uses the Pool theme, to utilize a JavaScript array to assist with displaying category pages.

Here’s the code…

Edit: Code has been moved to this post.

This works for both “pretty” and standard links, as it uses the template tag get_category_link to specify the link.