I found out that there is a way to display empty categories in wordpress without any extra stuff. All you need to do is open the sidebar.php file for your current theme, and find the line that says “wp_list_cats”. The edited line for my theme (Connections) looks like this before the change “php wp_list_cats(’optioncount=1′); ?>”, you just need to add “hide_empty=0&” before the optioncount=1. Think making a custom theme may be in my future.