FacetWP Hierarchy Select Addon

A dropdown with two hundred terms is not a filter, it is a test of patience

When a listing grows (properties by country, region and city, products by category and subcategory), putting the whole taxonomy into a single dropdown forces visitors to scroll a flat list where "Paris" sits next to "Europe" with no apparent order. The visitor does not know how you organised your terms, but you do. FacetWP Hierarchy Select Addon carries that hierarchy into the filter with guided dropdowns, one depth level at a time.

The practical truth is that this filter is only as good as the taxonomy behind it. If your parent and child categories are well thought out, the path feels natural. If they are a mess, the filter will show that mess very clearly.

One menu per level: how FacetWP Hierarchy Select turns your taxonomy into a path

It is an additional facet type for FacetWP. You create the facet, choose Hierarchy Select as the type and set a hierarchical taxonomy as the data source. Then you click "Add label" once for each depth level: two labels, two dropdowns. The default label is "Any" and you can customise it.

• Visible levels: by default only one level is shown. If your taxonomy has three levels and you want all three, you need three labels. The labels can be translated with the facetwp_i18n hook.
• Option order: by highest result count, by display value (alphabetical), by raw value or by term order. The last one works with WooCommerce product categories and attributes and with taxonomy ordering plugins such as Intuitive Custom Post Order or Advanced Taxonomy Terms Order.
• Ghosts: these are choices that appeared before filtering but would return zero results after it. With "Show ghosts" they are displayed dimmed and cannot be clicked, instead of disappearing. With "Preserve ghost order" they stay mixed in at their original position rather than going to the bottom (not available when sorting by highest count).

A post tagged only "Paris" shows up when filtering by "Europe"

FacetWP indexes both explicit and implicit hierarchies. If your taxonomy is Europe > France > Paris and a post only has "Paris" ticked, it will also appear when the visitor chooses "France" or "Europe". Your team does not have to tick every parent by hand.

The trade-off: every time you change a term's parent, you need to re-index, or the filter will keep the old hierarchy.

If you do not want to show every level, for example only the children of a specific term, you can do it with the facetwp_index_row hook, which requires writing PHP code. Hiding the counts in the dropdowns also means adding code to your theme's functions.php.

Decide whether your taxonomy and your FacetWP setup are ready for this add-on

It works as an add-on for FacetWP, not as a standalone plugin: you need FacetWP installed and a listing where the facet can go. It does not work with flat taxonomies either; the data source must be hierarchical. If you want term ordering, use a real taxonomy as the source, not an ACF field set to a taxonomy.

Can I show all three levels at once?

Yes, but you need to add one label per level. Without them, only one appears.

Does it work with WooCommerce categories?

Yes, a hierarchical product taxonomy is a valid source and it respects the drag-and-drop order of categories with the term order option.

Do I have to tick both parent and child on every post?

No. The most specific term is enough and the parent is indexed automatically.

I moved a term to a different parent and the filter has not changed, why?

You need to re-index after changing the hierarchy.

Can I hide the numbers in brackets?

Yes, but with a PHP snippet in your theme, not from a visual setting.