That does sound like the core widget. I’ve not observed a similar problem on my site, so it could be the result of your theme or a plugin. Are you sure there are no other post types that might be assigned category terms, maybe hidden or private?
Anyway, narrow down the source of the bad counts. Switch to twentytwenty theme and deactivate all plugins. The widget should show correct counts if the page is not cached. Restore your theme and plugins one at a time, checking the counts after each. When bad counts return, the last activated module is the cause. Ask the devs of the responsible module for advice on correcting the issue.
@bcworkz thanks! I am a software engineer, but the inner workings of WP are a mystery to me. 😀
This is good debugging skills for this issue, and for other issues.
Is there a way I can determine if the database might be at issue? Perhaps it’s just duplicate data somewhere?
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This reply was modified 6 years, 6 months ago by
commadelimited. Reason: added question
Oh! That’s a good thought. I was thinking WP core did a count query, but there is a specific count column in the term taxonomy table. Determine the category term’s ID from the edit link URL parameters. The edit link that shows up on roll over of the admin category list table. Use phpMyAdmin to examine the table and locate the term’s ID and its corresponding count. Maybe that value got corrupted somehow. Either that or the relations in term relationships table are messed up. Search for that term’s taxonomy ID in term relationships, which might or might not be the same as term ID. See how many objects come up in search and see if they match the count value.
BTW, inner workings of WP are a mystery to almost everyone, you’re in good company 🙂
A few odd things.
In the edit bar on the American West category, I see “Edit board game category” instead of simply “Edit category”. Is that a concern? When I click in to edit that category I see this URL: taxonomy=category&tag_ID=1278.
Here’s some of the corresponding data:
select * from wp_term_taxonomy where term_id = 1278
-- term_tax_id term_id tax desc parent count
-- 1278 1278 category "" 0 2
select * from wp_term_taxonomy where taxonomy = 'American West' or description = 'American West'
-- no results
select * from wp_termmeta where meta_key = 'American West' or meta_value = 'American West'
-- no results
select * from wp_terms where name = 'American West'
-- term_id name slug term_group
-- 1278 American West american-west 0
select * from wp_term_relationships where term_taxonomy_id = 1278
-- object_id term_taxonomy_id term_order
-- 2495 1278 0
-- 3905 1278 0
-- 3906 1278 0
-- 3908 1278 0
-- 8173 1278 0
The text you see in the UI are simply labels, so aren’t that concerning to me. It’s a little strange to take over the built in category taxonomy like that. Maybe even considered bad practice, but on its own would not explain improper count values. Most devs who want to have their own taxonomy for some purpose would create a new one, not take over the built in category taxonomy. However, it is a clue towards the extra count item.
At least the widget is behaving correctly despite you only seeing one post and there being 5 listed objects. The extra objects could be draft or backup posts that would not contribute to the count. You would need to check the posts table and locate the respective object IDs as post ID to determine the nature of each post.
You’ll find the one post listed on the archive page. There is probably another published object of a different post type that brings the count up to two. Data for a board game perhaps? The rest likely have draft or inherit (backup) post status that are assigned a category term but do not count towards the 2 count total shown in term taxonomy and in the widget.
. Reason: Moved to Fixing WordPress, this is not an Everything else WordPress topic
