How to display a description of a given category from a custom taxonomy

Question

I have a taxonomy called tcp_product_category. In the admin panel I have created a few terms within this taxonomy. On the homepage I want to display the description of one of those terms with the slug all-products.

For all normal categories I use this code:

<?php echo category_description( get_term_by('slug', 'guide', 'category')->term_id  ); ?>

This doesn't appear to work with custom taxonomies.

The code:

<?php 
echo category_description( 
    get_term_by('slug', 'all-products', 'tcp_product_category')->term_id
); 
?>

All the values I inserted are correct, but the get_term_by() simply doesn't give any results. Any ideas how to fix it?

Thanks,

Chris Planeta

Answer 1

Ok. I've found a solution. Thanks to this great article on Smashing Magazine

The code to retrieve category description from any taxonomy term would be :

<?php echo (get_term_by('slug', 'your-term-name', 'your-taxonomy-name')->description); ?>

As simple as that

Answer 2

It's more readable and just generally more WordPress-y to use the built-in term_description() function!

<?php echo term_description( {term_id}, '{taxonomy}' ); ?>