Hello tagDiv Support,
We are currently migrating a large regional news platform to Cloud Templates and are running into a query/filtering limitation that we are unsure how to solve correctly within Newspaper / tagDiv Composer.
Our setup is somewhat unusual, so I will explain it carefully.
Current Site Structure
We operate a Dutch regional news platform with approximately 57 regional categories.
Examples:
Regio Gouda
Regio Rotterdam
Regio Drechtsteden
etc.
Articles are intentionally assigned to multiple categories simultaneously.
Example article structure:
Regio Gouda
Zuid-Holland Province Category
Sometimes Binnenland (National)
Sometimes another regional umbrella category
This multi-category structure is required editorially and for SEO/distribution purposes.
What We Are Trying To Achieve
We want to replace static regional landing pages with dynamic category archive pages using Cloud Templates.
Example:
Instead of:
https://regioonline.nl/regio-gouda/
We want to use:
https://regioonline.nl/category/regio-gouda/
with a Cloud Template assigned to the category.
The goal is:
show posts from the current region
ALSO show related province-level content
BUT still prioritize/display correct regional content
WITHOUT manually configuring 57 static pages
The Problem
Inside Flex Blocks / Big Grid Flex blocks, the queries behave differently between:
Static pages using manual “Multiple Terms Filter”
Dynamic category archive pages using Cloud Templates
Example:
On the static page:
the block correctly shows a Zuid-Holland province article
But on the Cloud Template category archive:
the same block instead shows another regional article
Even though both posts contain overlapping categories.
Important Technical Detail
We discovered that:
category_ids behaves differently from normal category archives
category__in and internal TagDiv query handling appear to override or merge unexpectedly
multi-category posts are handled differently inside Cloud Templates versus static pages
While inspecting the theme code, we also noticed references to _current_cat handling internally in td_block.php, but we could not find official documentation about whether this value is actually supported for Flex/Grid block filtering in Cloud Templates.
We also tested custom filters through:
td_shortcode_to_args
td_data_source_blocks_query_args
inside the child theme.
However, this caused unstable or inconsistent behavior, especially with:
Big Grid Flex blocks
Flex blocks
mixed category/province logic
We reverted these changes because we do not want to maintain custom query modifications that could break after theme updates.
Our Main Question
Is there an officially supported way in Newspaper / tagDiv Composer to achieve the following:
For a category Cloud Template:
dynamically use the CURRENT category
include additional province categories
optionally exclude national categories
while preserving predictable ordering and matching behavior in Flex/Grid blocks
WITHOUT custom core edits.
Example desired logic for “Regio Gouda”:
Include:
current category (Regio Gouda)
province category (Zuid-Holland)
national regional pool category
Exclude:
Binnenland
And this should work dynamically for all regional categories.
Additional Question
Does Newspaper internally prioritize:
category_ids
category__in
queried object
tax_query
current archive context
in a specific order inside Flex Blocks / Big Grid Flex blocks?
Because it appears that archive context may override manually configured multiple term filters.
Final Question
Would you recommend:
using Cloud Templates for this setup
OR
keeping static regional landing pages
given this multi-category architecture?
We would really appreciate technical guidance or best practices from your side before rebuilding all regional pages again.
Thank you very much.
Hi,
Normally to make a block or grid or any element that displays posts, automatically display posts based on the type of template it’s in, these special filters are used -> https://prnt.sc/vOsiJhj9yVIB So in your category template, the blocks should be set to the special current category filter. It’s a dynamic filter that displays posts based on the category you are on.
But if besides that current category filter you also use IDs in the multiple categories filter to include/exclude, it will override the current category filter.
The posts that the block displays using the current category filter will belong there, it means they are in that category. Additional filtering can be done by tag, if that’s helpful perhaps.
To be honest I rarely see pages used instead of category pages. It’s not needed in most cases and it’s just more work. Maybe it was a viable method at the time when the theme did not have cloud templates. Or maybe it’s a viable method if you want personalized category pages, although you can have a category template for each category if you want, and also custom fields can be used sometimes. But in your case since you need more control and if it works for you with our current setup and requirements, then there’s no problem using pages.
Thank you!
Hi Simon,
Thank you for the detailed explanation and clarification regarding the current category filter behavior inside Cloud Templates and Flex/Grid blocks.
Your explanation actually helped me better understand the design philosophy behind the system and also why our setup behaves differently from what Newspaper normally expects.
I think part of the reason is that I still approach content structures from a more relational/database-oriented mindset. My background goes back to older database systems like dBase II/III/IV, BASIC, DOS scripting, Excel VBA/macros, etc. Because of that, I naturally tend to think in layered logical relationships rather than purely in single-category archive structures.
So in my head, the logic becomes something like:
IF current category = Regio Gouda
THEN include:
Regio Gouda (the regional page + the region category)
Zuid-Holland (one of the 12 provences of the Netherlands + the region category Gouda)
regional/national shared pool (one category showing on all regionpages)
AND exclude:
Binnenland (the general page and category for nationwide news without a specific regional topic)
rather than simply:
“display current category archive”.
That is probably where my expectations differed from how Newspaper internally handles Cloud Template category logic.
Our setup is also somewhat unusual in scale and structure for a single-site WordPress installation:
1 VPS-based installation
Ubuntu + Apache2 + Plesk Obsidian
16 vCPU / 60 GB RAM / 2 TB storage
single WordPress site
67 main sections/pages
57 dynamically related regional structures
55,000+ news posts since 2017
40,000+ featured images through Google Drive (WPMF Cloud addon)
database approx. 740 MB
site files approx. 600 MB
WP Rocket + Redis Object Cache
approx. 79,000 unique visitors monthly
approx. 325,000 pageviews monthly
Performance remains extremely stable:
GTMetrix A / 100%
Core Web Vitals all green
SEO 100/100
average TTFB around 55ms
So for us, the discussion was never really about performance gains. The static regional pages already perform extremely well.
The real motivation behind the Cloud Template migration was primarily:
maintaining one centralized template instead of maintaining 57+ manually structured regional landing pages.
Your explanation now makes it much clearer why our relational regional/province logic does not fully align with the intended behavior of _current_cat inside Cloud Templates.
To be honest, I actually appreciate the clarification because it confirms that the behavior we observed was not random or broken, but simply outside the normal archive-oriented design philosophy of the system.
Thank you again for the insights and technical clarification.
Best regards,
Egbert van den Bosch
Regio Online Nederland
