Post count not show a total at the parent level

Good Morning Terri,

The option to accumulate the sum of child category posts onto parent menu items is not currently built into the plugin. We considered adding this option a while back and decided against it because it adds extra queries making the menu heavier to load.

You may add this functionality using a custom filter. If you add the following code to your active theme’s functions.php file, your menus will automatically include all child category counts.

/** * Make category counts include the counts of all descendant categories. * * Recursively sums the counts of every child category into its * parent, so a top level category's count reflects every post in * its entire branch, not only posts assigned directly to it. * * Categories excluded from Advanced Sidebar menus (either via the * "Exclude this category from all Advanced Sidebar menus" term * setting, or via the widget's own exclude option) are skipped, * along with their entire branch, matching how they are already * hidden from display. */ add_action( 'advanced-sidebar-menu/widget/before-render', function( $menu ) { if ( 'category' !== $menu::WIDGET ) { return; } $sum_children_count = function( \WP_Term $category ) use ( &$sum_children_count, $menu ) { $total = (int) $category->count; $children = get_terms( [ 'taxonomy' => $category->taxonomy, 'parent' => $category->term_id, 'hide_empty' => false, ] ); if ( is_wp_error( $children ) ) { return $total; } foreach ( $children as $child ) { if ( $menu->is_excluded( $child->term_id ) ) { continue; } $total += $sum_children_count( $child ); } return $total; }; $add_summed_counts = function( string $name, \WP_Term $category ) use ( $sum_children_count ) { $category->count = $sum_children_count( $category ); return $name; }; add_filter( 'list_cats', $add_summed_counts, 10, 2 ); add_action( 'advanced-sidebar-menu/widget/after-render', function() use ( $add_summed_counts ) { remove_filter( 'list_cats', $add_summed_counts, 10 ); } ); } );

Have a great day!