Title: insert category
Last modified: May 1, 2017

---

# insert category

 *  Resolved [brad3260](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad3260/)
 * (@brad3260)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/)
 * Hello everyone, I am developing a plugin and I want to give some defaults categories
   within my custom taxonomy. I want the user to be able to delete/edit these defaults
   if they’d like so unless I’m wrong (very possible), I need to add these categories
   when my plugin gets activated and this is where I am running into problems. Take
   the following code.
 *     ```
       function bbradley_rfp_activation() {
       	$my_cat = array('cat_name' => 'My Category', 'category_description' => 'A Cool Category', 'category_nicename' => 'category-slug', 'taxonomy' => 'Services');
   
       // Create the category
       $bbt = wp_insert_category($my_cat);
       mail($myemail, 'sub', $bbt);
   
       }
       //add_action("admin_init", 'bbradley_rfp_activation');
       register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'bbradley_rfp_activation');
       ```
   
 * When I try to insert the category on the activation of my plugin, it doesn’t 
   work. But if I do it using the admin_init hook, it works but then it can’t be
   deleted since it would be added every time they visit the admin page. Can someone
   tell me what I’m doing wrong?

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

 *  [Aboelabbas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dawn-birth/)
 * (@dawn-birth)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9087082)
 * It should work very fine, but make sure that line lies inside the main plugin
   file
    `register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'bbradley_rfp_activation');`
 *  Thread Starter [brad3260](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad3260/)
 * (@brad3260)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9087098)
 * It is but it’s not working, any ideas why?
 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9087531)
 * The problem is that when your plugin’s registered hook fires, your plugin has
   yet to actually be activated, so there is no custom taxonomy yet to add the term
   to. I suppose you could also register the taxonomy within this callback. You’d
   still need to do so in regular plugin code as well.
 * I think a more elegant solution, though still a little goofy, is to have your
   plugin’s activation hook callback simply add the “bbradley_rfp_activation” function
   to the “activated_plugin” action, which of course does fire after your plugin
   is activated, so your taxonomy will be registered and you should be able to add
   a term to it.
 * Because the hook to “activated_plugin” is only added when your plugin is activated,
   there would be no issue with other activations firing the same action, which 
   does happen. When that does happen, your “activated_plugin” callback is not there
   because it is never added when other plugins activate, only yours.
 * In a manner of speaking, “activated_plugin” could be thought of as a public action,
   whereas your plugin’s registered activation hook is “private” to only your plugin.
   This is only an analogy, the public and private terms are not used in the formal
   PHP code sense, they are only conceptual terms in this case.
 *  Thread Starter [brad3260](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad3260/)
 * (@brad3260)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9090200)
 * Hello, thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately there is very little documentation
   to this action so I’m hoping you can help me a little more. I replaced the register_activation_hook
   line with
    `do_action('activated_plugin', array(__FILE__, 'bbradley_rfp_activation'));`
   but the function doesn’t get triggered?
 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9091044)
 * Not really what I had in mind 🙂
 *     ```
       register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'bbradley_pre_activation');
       function bbradley_pre_activation() {
          add_action('activated_plugin', 'bbradley_rfp_activation');
       }
       ```
   
 * The activated_plugin action fires immediately after activation. If this doesn’t
   work, maybe finding a later hook would do it.
 *  Thread Starter [brad3260](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad3260/)
 * (@brad3260)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9094070)
 * Ah that makes sense. I have the following code.
 *     ```
       function bbradley_rfp_activation() {
       	$my_cat = array('cat_ID' => 0, 'cat_name' => 'My Category', 'category_description' => 'A Cool Category', 'category_nicename' => 'category-slug', 'taxonomy' => 'Services');
       $bbt = wp_insert_category($my_cat);
       mail($myemail, 'sub', 'post fired');
       }
   
       register_activation_hook( __FILE__, 'bbradley_rfp_activation_pre');
       function bbradley_rfp_activation_pre() {
       	add_action('activated_plugin', 'bbradley_rfp_activation');
       	mail($myemail, 'sub', 'pre fired');
       }
       ```
   
 * I get the “pre fired” e-mail but I don’t get the “post fired” e-mail so it seems
   the “activated_plugin”action is not getting triggered?
 *  Thread Starter [brad3260](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad3260/)
 * (@brad3260)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9094195)
 * I was mistaken, I am getting both e-mails but the category is not being added.
 *  [Aboelabbas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dawn-birth/)
 * (@dawn-birth)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9094378)
 * Try this; call the function that registers the taxonomy within “bbradley_rfp_activation()”
   
   Something like this:
 *     ```
       add_action( 'init', 'create_service_tax', 1 );
   
       function create_service_tax() {
       	register_taxonomy(
       		'service',
       		'post',
       		array(
       			'label' => __( 'Service' ),
       			'rewrite' => array( 'slug' => 'services' ),
       			'hierarchical' => true,
       		)
       	);
       }
   
       function bbradley_rfp_activation() {
       	$my_cat = array('cat_name' => 'My Category',
         'category_description' => 'A Cool Category',
         'category_nicename' => 'cool-category', 'taxonomy' => 'services');
       // Rgister Services Taxonomy
       create_service_tax();
       // Create the category
       $bbt = wp_insert_category($my_cat);
       mail($myemail, 'sub', $bbt);
       }
       ```
   
 *  Thread Starter [brad3260](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad3260/)
 * (@brad3260)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9094452)
 * Problem with that is, the category would be added every time a page is loaded.
   I was to give the user a couple of default categories that they can keep, edit
   or delete if they want. I’m starting to think the easiest way to do this is to
   have a “first time activated” flag that once the plugin is activated, the flag
   gets set to false. Then in have the plugin check that flag, if true, insert categories,
   and if false, don’t. I was just trying not to have that if statement run every
   time, seems like a waste.
 *  [Aboelabbas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dawn-birth/)
 * (@dawn-birth)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9094556)
 * No, it will be added on activation only, the idea here is to register the taxonomy
   within the activation hook to be able to create terms for this taxonomy.
 *  [Aboelabbas](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dawn-birth/)
 * (@dawn-birth)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9094578)
 * Here is a similar question on stackexchange:
    [https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/20043/inserting-taxonomy-terms-during-a-plugin-activation](https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/20043/inserting-taxonomy-terms-during-a-plugin-activation)
 *  Thread Starter [brad3260](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad3260/)
 * (@brad3260)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9094812)
 * You guys rock! That works, thank you so much for the help!

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

The topic ‘insert category’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [category](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/category/)
 * [cpt](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/cpt/)
 * [taxonomy](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/taxonomy/)

 * In: [Developing with WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/wp-advanced/)
 * 12 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [brad3260](https://wordpress.org/support/users/brad3260/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/insert-category/#post-9094812)
 * Status: resolved

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