Issue with Subcategories Widget Displaying Excessive Nested Categories

We are experiencing an issue with the Subcategories widget in Newspaper Theme Version 12.6.9 on our site. The widget is currently displaying an excessive number of nested subcategories, which seems to be a change in behavior from previous versions.

Our category structure includes deep nesting in some areas, such as the Expert Insights category (example: https://incompliancemag.com/topics/resources/expert-insights/). The widget should ideally display only the direct subcategories of the current category, but instead, it is pulling in multiple levels of nested categories—sometimes 5-6 levels deep.

We have set the widget to limit the number of subcategories to 8, but this setting does not appear to restrict the depth of the category hierarchy. We believe this may be a bug because, in previous versions, the widget behaved as expected by only displaying the immediate subcategories of the selected category.

Expected Behavior
For the Expert Insights category, the Subcategories widget should only display:

Expert Insights
– Blogs
– Columns
– Past Columns

Currently, the widget is pulling in every sub-subcategory under Expert Insights, which is not the intended functionality.

Steps to Reproduce
– Navigate to the Expert Insights category page.
– Observe the Subcategories widget displaying deeply nested categories rather than just direct children.
– Adjusting the “Limit” setting in the widget does not resolve the issue.

Expected Functionality
The widget should only display direct subcategories of the current category or if that has changed there should be an option to limit the depth of subcategory levels displayed.

Can you confirm whether this is a bug or an intended change in behavior? If it’s a bug, is there a fix or a workaround we can apply?

Thanks for your help!

Thanks for the reply Bettina. This issue is reproducible with a clean install of the Newspaper theme. No credentials should be needed to look into this issue. I did however email contact@tagdiv.com as you suggested.

Hey Bettina,
I am sorry but was that something that has changed with how the subcategory widget functions? I it did not used to work the way it is now. Support never responded to my email either. It used to ONLY show the direct children not children, grandchildren, etc.

Hi Bettina,

I have another client experiencing the same issue. Previously, the subcategories widget only displayed immediate children of the current category. However, since version 12.6.8 or 12.6.9, it now shows all subcategories, regardless of depth.

This change is significantly impacting navigation. Do we have any way to revert the widget to its previous functionality?

So there is nothing we can do in the meantime before that option gets added?

Hi Bettina,

I hope you’re well. I wanted to follow up on the status of the subcategories widget issue. I tested version 12.7.0, which was released this week, and unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to include a fix.

Could you please provide an update or estimated timeline for when this will be addressed? It has now become a critical issue for us, as 12.7.0 includes a security patch, and due to the removal of subcategory widget functionality in 12.6.9, our clients are currently left exposed.

Thank you in advance for your help—I appreciate any insight you can share.

Hi Bettina,

I’m having a hard time understanding why this functionality was removed. It’s been a core part of the Newspaper theme ever since Cloud Templates were introduced, and its sudden removal—without any notice or explanation—has been both surprising and frustrating, especially given how well it had worked for years.

I don’t believe it’s reasonable to be asked to pay a custom development fee to restore something that was previously available as standard functionality.

I’m genuinely unsure how best to communicate the seriousness of this issue. I would really appreciate it if you could escalate this thread to someone with the authority to prioritize a resolution. Leaving clients exposed to potential security risks isn’t an acceptable solution.

Thank you for your understanding and help.

Bettina,
Can you tell me exactly what files and line numbers from 12.6.8 that I can copy and paste into 12.7.0? I honestly tried to decipher the code but it appeared that it spanned across multiple files, functions and classes.

Thank you again for your attention to this matter.

Also experiencing difficulty with this issue. It is highly frustrating when parts of the theme are unchanged without explanation.

Like the above user, our site also used to show just the direct subcategories. Now, it shows multiple levels.

This is a highly complex theme that largely works well, yet the last few releases have developed an unwanted habit of breaking things that were working fine.

I do hope category siblings is fixed asap, or at least returned to how it used to function.

Bettina,
This has been going on now for almost 4 months now. Is there no response from your team on this?

Hello Bettina,
Has there been any movement on this at all?

Hey Calin,
This has been about 6 months now, and even with the release of version 12.7.3 the subcategories widget is still not working as it once did.

I just wanted to see if this issue is any closer to being fixed or reverted back to the functionality it used to have?

Thanks Calin! That worked. Do you know if this has been implemented in the latest update that just came out yesterday? 12.7.4