You may be wondering that WordPress allows us to remove category slug from URL? By default, WordPress adds a category base of /category/ to the URLs of all category archive pages.
In SEO, we generally talk about shaping the right slug for your site page. As you may know, a URL slug is the part of a link that comes after the domain extension that indicates the link direction.
A perfect URL slug not only helps the user to understand what your page about but also to improve SEO of the page.
How to Remove Category prefix from URLs
Coming to the point, you can undoubtedly remove or change /category/ slug from your page WordPress URLs.
yourdomain.com/category/entertainment/
Can be turned into ↓
yourdomain.com/entertainment/
You heard it right, you can even change it to something different like you can replace /category/ to /info/ or whatever you wanna replace with.
yourdomain.com/category/entertainment/
Can be turned into ↓
yourdomain.com/info/entertainment/
If it’s not about SEO or whatever any reasons you want to remove or change *category* slug from URL, you need to follow one method from below 3 methods that suit you best.
1. Remove Category prefix from URLs with Permalink settings
The very first and simple method to remove /category/ base from site URLs is done within the WordPress dashboard. You just need to log in to your WordPress site and head towards Settings > Permalinks.
Next, you have to just put a dot ( . ) in the Category Base field. Once you do that WordPress considers this dot ( . ) to blank space in URLs, so ultimately it gets rid of /category/ slug in URLs.
Also, keep in mind, you can even change /category/ slugs with something else. Just put anything in the Category Base field and it will replace it with default settings. If you leave Category Base blank. the category will be displayed in your WordPress URLs.
You may find an outdated resource on other sites.
Like putting /%category%/%postname%/ in the Custom Structure would help. That’s not gonna work it will just add /uncategorized/ slug in your post URLs:
2. Remove Category from URLs with .htaccess
If you don’t want touch permalink settings, no worry you can do this via .htaccess. To do this, you need to paste one line of code to your .htaccess file
Your .htaccess file starts with a dot because it is a hidden file. So if you don’t see it in your root folder, make sure that your file manager isn’t keeping those files hidden from view.
Once you found it, copy and paste the below code to your .htaccess file and save your changes:
RewriteRule ^category/(.+)$ http://www.site.com/$1 [R=301,L]
Make sure you replace http://www.site.com/ to your domain name.
Next, upload it on your server’s public_html directory. You can access it using FTP client software or File Manager in your cPanel.
3. Remove Category prefix from URLs with Yoast Plugin.
If you’re using Yoast plugin then this is the easiest & safest method you’ll see. With the help of this plugin, you can remove the category prefix from the URLs instantly without adding or changing any code in core files.
To do this:
- From the WordPress dashboard, click or hover on Yoast SEO
- Click on ‘Search Appearance’
- Click on the ‘Taxonomies’ tab.
- Toggle the ‘Category URLs’ switch.
- Set to Remove to remove the categories prefix
Note: Make sure you haven’t made any changes to your Category Base settings in permalinks. It can cause unexpected URL behavior and you may face WordPress error.
Wrapping up:
These are some methods to remove /category/ prefix from your site URLs. Of course, there are might other methods too but those would to complicated and dangerous so keep it simple and safe.
I hope this article answers all questions regarding this topic if you having questions or suggestions on this topic feel free to let us know by leaving a comment in the comment section.
I have an error when removing category from slug in the last update of Yoast. Broken URL and returning to 404
For the error 404 issue, you can go to WordPress permalinks settings and save the configuration (without actually changing any option). This fixed the 404 errors for me. Hope it will work for you.
You say right, almost all sites which covers this topic has outdated resource. But your guide works pretty well, thanks for the help.
Yeah, the latest version of WP v.5 DOESN’T SEEM TO ALLOW (/%category%/%postname%/), at least in my case.
Yeah, I noticed. This website has a working solution. Other articles are pointless, this article deserves the first place.
the issue is already fixed in yoast where settings such as removing category not being migrated properly, it should be working fine on Yoast SEO 7v+
This makes category disappear but if I press on that new link it will redirect me to a none existing page. I’m the only one facing this issue?
This works for only post category but with tag, you should plugin for this and it doesn’t change any WordPress default files http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-no-category-base/
Too many plugins on a site may cause problems. So this would ideally be done without it. Cheers.
I don´t know how to do it using code, but for those who don’t mind using a plugin. This is a great one that works for me:
https://es.wordpress.org/plugins/permalink-manager/
You can do these things in many ways in WordPress, but I always opted for the simplest solutions. Thanks, mate for listing the simplest solution. Very appreciated
Instead, I tried this code
function fix_slash( $string, $type ){
global $wp_rewrite;
if ( $wp_rewrite->use_trailing_slashes == false )
{
if ( $type != 'single' && $type != 'category' )
return trailingslashit( $string );
if ( $type == 'single' && ( strpos( $string, '.html/' ) !== false ) )return trailingslashit( $string );
if ( $type == 'category' && ( strpos( $string, 'category' ) !== false ) ){
$aa_g = str_replace( "/category/", "/", $string );
return trailingslashit( $aa_g );
}
if ( $type == 'category' )return trailingslashit( $string );
}
return $string;
}
add_filter( 'user_trailingslashit', 'fix_slash', 55, 2 );It works for me. However, it doesn’t seem to work for sub-categories, though