my categories vanished in wordpress

while doing upgrades in one of my wordpress blog the categories vanished

how can i fix back the categories, can some one just guide me through.

 

Just add the Categories widget on the widgets page. In wp-admin, click on appearance and select widgets. Then scroll down to categories and click add.

 

Can you tell from where did they vanished - Site or from Dashboard?

 

please check www.tradehuge.com under the latest post it shows categories unavailable

 

Are the categories shown via a widget or sidebar code? If using sidebar code, can you paste that code here?

 

<h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('orderby=name&show_count=1&hide_empty=1&hierarchical=1&exclude=,2&title_li='); ?>
</ul>

this is the code in sidebar.

 

Replace the above code with the below and try again:

<h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories('orderby=name&show_count=1&hide_empty=1&hierarchical=1&exclude=2&title_li='); ?>
</ul>

 

works perfect now , thread to be closed.

 

Reason for it not working was a comma before 2 in exclude which said wordpress to exclude all categories. Removing the comma worked.