Wordpress Breadcrumbs Without a Plugin

Breadcrumbs is an important element of a web site navigation, which boosts his usability. Especially it concerns to a sites with a complex structure. Unfortunatelly, I don’t use breadcrumbs on my sites, may be because their structure is very simple or because I could not find a way of making breadcrumbs, suitable for me.

I have seen a different ways of a breadcrumbs implementation on WordPress sites, but not one of them I does not like, because all of them does not display a full chain of links. So I have created my version of WordPress breadcrumbs without a plugin.

Yes, there is a ready plugins for WordPress breadcrumbs, but I prefer to use a short code snippets, which doing the same.

Features of my version of WordPress breadcrumbs

• Displays a full chain of links to the current page. For example, if the current post is in a second level category, so breadcrumbs will looks like this:

  Home » Category » Subcategory » Post Title

  But all, what I have seen, displays only such an option (excluding plugins):

  Home » Subcategory » Post Title

  The same applies to pages and subpages. For example, for a 3rd level page breadcrumbs will looks like this:

  Home » Page Level 1 » Page Level 2 » Page Level 3

• Breadcrumbs is appearing on a following types of WordPress pages:
  • paged navigation (like sitename.com/page/2/);
  • category archive;
  • tag archive;
  • daily archive;
  • monthly archive;
  • yearly archive;
  • author archive;
  • single post page;
  • single page;
  • attachment page;
  • search results;
  • 404 error page.

• adding a page number (if archive page is second or more);

• custom symbol of delimiter;

• custom text for a ‘Home’ link;

• current crumb styling.

WordPress breadcrumbs function (last updated: 2013.01.04)

function dimox_breadcrumbs() {

	/* === OPTIONS === */
	$text['home']     = 'Home'; // text for the 'Home' link
	$text['category'] = 'Archive by Category "%s"'; // text for a category page
	$text['search']   = 'Search Results for "%s" Query'; // text for a search results page
	$text['tag']      = 'Posts Tagged "%s"'; // text for a tag page
	$text['author']   = 'Articles Posted by %s'; // text for an author page
	$text['404']      = 'Error 404'; // text for the 404 page

	$showCurrent = 1; // 1 - show current post/page title in breadcrumbs, 0 - don't show
	$showOnHome  = 0; // 1 - show breadcrumbs on the homepage, 0 - don't show
	$delimiter   = ' » '; // delimiter between crumbs
	$before      = '<span class="current">'; // tag before the current crumb
	$after       = '</span>'; // tag after the current crumb
	/* === END OF OPTIONS === */

	global $post;
	$homeLink = get_bloginfo('url') . '/';
	$linkBefore = '<span typeof="v:Breadcrumb">';
	$linkAfter = '</span>';
	$linkAttr = ' rel="v:url" property="v:title"';
	$link = $linkBefore . '<a' . $linkAttr . ' href="%1$s">%2$s</a>' . $linkAfter;

	if (is_home() || is_front_page()) {

		if ($showOnHome == 1) echo '<div id="crumbs"><a href="' . $homeLink . '">' . $text['home'] . '</a></div>';

	} else {

		echo '<div id="crumbs" xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/#">' . sprintf($link, $homeLink, $text['home']) . $delimiter;

		if ( is_category() ) {
			$thisCat = get_category(get_query_var('cat'), false);
			if ($thisCat->parent != 0) {
				$cats = get_category_parents($thisCat->parent, TRUE, $delimiter);
				$cats = str_replace('<a', $linkBefore . '<a' . $linkAttr, $cats);
				$cats = str_replace('</a>', '</a>' . $linkAfter, $cats);
				echo $cats;
			}
			echo $before . sprintf($text['category'], single_cat_title('', false)) . $after;

		} elseif ( is_search() ) {
			echo $before . sprintf($text['search'], get_search_query()) . $after;

		} elseif ( is_day() ) {
			echo sprintf($link, get_year_link(get_the_time('Y')), get_the_time('Y')) . $delimiter;
			echo sprintf($link, get_month_link(get_the_time('Y'),get_the_time('m')), get_the_time('F')) . $delimiter;
			echo $before . get_the_time('d') . $after;

		} elseif ( is_month() ) {
			echo sprintf($link, get_year_link(get_the_time('Y')), get_the_time('Y')) . $delimiter;
			echo $before . get_the_time('F') . $after;

		} elseif ( is_year() ) {
			echo $before . get_the_time('Y') . $after;

		} elseif ( is_single() && !is_attachment() ) {
			if ( get_post_type() != 'post' ) {
				$post_type = get_post_type_object(get_post_type());
				$slug = $post_type->rewrite;
				printf($link, $homeLink . '/' . $slug['slug'] . '/', $post_type->labels->singular_name);
				if ($showCurrent == 1) echo $delimiter . $before . get_the_title() . $after;
			} else {
				$cat = get_the_category(); $cat = $cat[0];
				$cats = get_category_parents($cat, TRUE, $delimiter);
				if ($showCurrent == 0) $cats = preg_replace("#^(.+)$delimiter$#", "$1", $cats);
				$cats = str_replace('<a', $linkBefore . '<a' . $linkAttr, $cats);
				$cats = str_replace('</a>', '</a>' . $linkAfter, $cats);
				echo $cats;
				if ($showCurrent == 1) echo $before . get_the_title() . $after;
			}

		} elseif ( !is_single() && !is_page() && get_post_type() != 'post' && !is_404() ) {
			$post_type = get_post_type_object(get_post_type());
			echo $before . $post_type->labels->singular_name . $after;

		} elseif ( is_attachment() ) {
			$parent = get_post($post->post_parent);
			$cat = get_the_category($parent->ID); $cat = $cat[0];
			$cats = get_category_parents($cat, TRUE, $delimiter);
			$cats = str_replace('<a', $linkBefore . '<a' . $linkAttr, $cats);
			$cats = str_replace('</a>', '</a>' . $linkAfter, $cats);
			echo $cats;
			printf($link, get_permalink($parent), $parent->post_title);
			if ($showCurrent == 1) echo $delimiter . $before . get_the_title() . $after;

		} elseif ( is_page() && !$post->post_parent ) {
			if ($showCurrent == 1) echo $before . get_the_title() . $after;

		} elseif ( is_page() && $post->post_parent ) {
			$parent_id  = $post->post_parent;
			$breadcrumbs = array();
			while ($parent_id) {
				$page = get_page($parent_id);
				$breadcrumbs[] = sprintf($link, get_permalink($page->ID), get_the_title($page->ID));
				$parent_id  = $page->post_parent;
			}
			$breadcrumbs = array_reverse($breadcrumbs);
			for ($i = 0; $i < count($breadcrumbs); $i++) {
				echo $breadcrumbs[$i];
				if ($i != count($breadcrumbs)-1) echo $delimiter;
			}
			if ($showCurrent == 1) echo $delimiter . $before . get_the_title() . $after;

		} elseif ( is_tag() ) {
			echo $before . sprintf($text['tag'], single_tag_title('', false)) . $after;

		} elseif ( is_author() ) {
	 		global $author;
			$userdata = get_userdata($author);
			echo $before . sprintf($text['author'], $userdata->display_name) . $after;

		} elseif ( is_404() ) {
			echo $before . $text['404'] . $after;
		}

		if ( get_query_var('paged') ) {
			if ( is_category() || is_day() || is_month() || is_year() || is_search() || is_tag() || is_author() ) echo ' (';
			echo __('Page') . ' ' . get_query_var('paged');
			if ( is_category() || is_day() || is_month() || is_year() || is_search() || is_tag() || is_author() ) echo ')';
		}

		echo '</div>';

	}
} // end dimox_breadcrumbs()

Simply paste this function into a functions.php file of your theme and then paste the following code in a place of your theme, where breadcrumbs must appearing:

<?php if (function_exists('dimox_breadcrumbs')) dimox_breadcrumbs(); ?>

All that remains to do for now, is to design your breadcrumbs with CSS. You can use #crumbs for styling breadcrumbs block and #crumbs .current for styling a current crumb.

You can also look at breadcrumbs video tutorial, which show you how to install this function on TwentyTen WordPress theme.

Function works on WordPress 3.0 or higher.