Question

Rather than use another widget I want to code the method to include the WP “Categories” widget directly within the content of a page or post.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

To add wordpress post categories into the template file you need to use

<?php wp_list_categories($args); ?>

Default arguments are :

<?php  $args = array(
      'show_option_all'    => ,
      'orderby'            => 'name',
      'order'              => 'ASC',
      'show_last_update'   => 0,
      'style'              => 'list',
      'show_count'         => 0,
      'hide_empty'         => 1,
      'use_desc_for_title' => 1,
      'child_of'           => 0,
      'feed'               => ,
      'feed_type'          => ,
      'feed_image'         => ,
      'exclude'            => ,
      'exclude_tree'       => ,
      'include'            => ,
      'hierarchical'       => true,
      'title_li'           => __( 'Categories' ),
      'show_option_none'   => __('No categories'),
      'number'             => NULL,
      'echo'               => 1,
      'depth'              => 0,
      'current_category'   => 0,
      'pad_counts'         => 0,
      'taxonomy'           => 'category',
      'walker'             => 'Walker_Category' );
 ?>

or you can simply use it without parameters, in that case defaults will work.

 <?php wp_list_categories(); ?>

you can read more about this function here