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How to Remove Category From WordPress URL

In the previous week some of our viewers asked is it possible to remove category from WordPress URL in WordPress-powered website? So my answer to this question is yes! Off course, you can easily remove categories form your site in WordPress. If you are also one of them and trying to work out to remove categories from category URLs, but couldn't seem to remove it, then you are really at the right place.

Removing category slug from WordPress URLs or Permalink will give you several benefits. For example it will improve your site SEO and will also give you better user-friendly URLs. Removing category from URL means removing /category/from category URLs on a WordPress blog or site. We want to let the slug of category taxonomy appear in URLs but not the slug or word category itself.

In this article, we are discussing different ways to remove category from WordPress URL. But it is to be kept in mind that if you have a fresh WordPress installation then you have to setup your permalinks according to your requirements. Also remember that if you change permalinks structure on a live site, you may lose a lot of traffic. In order to avoid lose in traffic, you have to redirect your site old URLs to new ones. This will avoid any loses in your site SEO and site traffic.

Let say your website is www.example.com/category/news and you wanted it to be www.example.com/news, so we are always here to help you and resolve this issue for you. With our quick and unique and easy-to-understand guide, you will be able to achieve this task. Now to get rid of categories, in this blog post we will discuss different methods.

Removing Category with Permalink Method

In fact this is one of the easiest and simple method for removing categories from yours site URL. All you need is to set your permalinks to /%category%/postname%/ and if you leave the category base blank, in this case, it will display the WordPress default category. It is, therefore, to be kept in mind that providing dot to Category base in setting is must. If you are using default permalink structure, you have to change it to the custom structure. Below are some important steps involved in this process, you should follow,

From the left hand side, go to Setting >> Permalinks
Select Custom Structure
Add/%category%/%postname%/ after your domain name
Next, change Category Base to period/dot.

Once you have made the changes, now visit and check a post after you have saved the setting and also check the URL. Now it won't have the category base or category slug now. As this method is currently working very well, but there is no assurance that it will also work in the future as well.

2. Removing Category with Plugin Method

This is another method which is used for removing category from URL of WordPress site. In this section of our blog post, we will show you, and you will learn how to remove category from your URLs in WordPress site with the help of WordPress plugins. There are different WordPress plugins used for this purpose. These plugins will enable you to easily remove category slug from your website URL.

2.1 Removing Category Base with the Help of Category URL Plugin

This is another popular WordPress plugin that is used for removing Category Base with the help of Category URL Plugin. It has more than 70,000+ active installations and higher user's rating. Instead of this feature, it also offers additional advantages for its users. With the help of this you will be able to remove categories from your website's URL.

If your website is older than six months, you can try using this plugin. Once you download and install this plugin, you will don't need to configure anything or bring any modification in any file. It will redirect the old category permalinks with the new ones, and it is really better practice for SEO purpose. However, if you use several WordPress plugin, it might slow down your website loading speed and therefore, you will need to keep more plugin up to.

2.2 Removing Category from Your URLs with Yoast's SEO Plugin

In this method, we are using a very popular WordPress SEO plugin, called Yoast SEO plugin. It is really another quick and easy way to remove category form yours URLs with this WordPress plugin. Yoast SEO plugin comes with great features and handy setting to remove the category base for you.

We are not sure about this feature might be still there and working silently, however, we have heard about this, that the latest version of Yoast SEO plugin has discontinued this option of category removal from URLs. The past version of this plugin had this option in the advanced menu of plugin setting. Those websites owners who are using Yoast SEO Plugin for a long time, they will still have their URLs without the category base.

The following steps are involved in this process, you should follow.

Visit Yoast SEO

Next, select "Advanced" option.

Next, click on the tab permalink at the top

Now check "Strip the category base (usually/category/) from the category URL.

2.3 Removing Category from Slug Using FV Top Level Categories Plugin

FV Top Level Categories is another plugin that is used to remove category base from WordPress Permalinks. Writing a function is also a method for the functionality however, it makes the blog or website slower. It is also alternate option of the above mentioned WordPress plugin. This plugin will enable you to remove the category slug from URLs of yours website.

3. Removing Category From URLs With .htaccess Method

This is another method of removing categories from your URLs with the help of .htaccess method. You can also add this code to your .htaccess file via FTP rather than using a dot. While adding this code one point should be noted that you have to add this code before closing </IfModule> tag in the file. With the help of this method you will be able to remove category slug from WordPress permalink manually in the .htaccess file just by adding the following line of code.

RewriteRule ^category/(.+)$ http://www.yoursite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Conclusion

In this article we have discussed different methods with the help of which you will be able to remove category from WordPress URL in your WordPress-built website. All the above methods are useful and will work, however, we strongly recommend to choose and use that method which is going to add less codes in your WordPress site or blog. We would like to recmmend you to use the permalinks method, as it do not need any code or plugin. But this is useful for those who have recently launcehd theire website.

For those peoples who's website is older than 6 months, we would like to recommend them to use the plugin method. Furthermore, in plugin method, we recommend you to use the Remove Category URL plugin. The Yoast SEO plugin is also useful, because, this plugin can be used for both purposes, SEO and removing categories from site URLs.

Also read about 11 Best Ways to Optimize Your Blog Content For SEO

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