Remove Category Base from WordPress Permalinks

WordPress adds a base of /category/ to the all the category archive permalinks. This means that your category links look like this:
http://example.org/category/uncategorized/

For the most part, that’s a good thing. If a category and post or page have the same slug, they won’t interfere with each other. But sometimes you need something else, so this tutorial shows you how to change the category base or remove it.

Change the Category Base

You can change the /category/ base to be something else, like /topics/ or /articles/ or whatever you like.

1. Go to Settings > Permalinks
2. In the Optional section, find Category base and add whatever you like there.
3. You can edit the Tag base there too.

Remove the Category Base

But there are times when you would like to remove the Category base altogether for your Category archive page URL. I prefer this when using a custom WordPress permalink structure of
/%category%/%postname%/

There are several plugins that will do this for you:

• WordPress SEO by Yoast
• No Category Base (WPML) by Marios Alexandrou
• A post on WPMUdev by Joe Foley

Flush Permalinks

Be sure to flush your permalinks each time you make changes to your WordPress URL structure. It’s not always needed, but can help.

Go to Settings > Permalinks; click Save Changes.

Which Is Best For You?

You If you use WordPress SEO, that’s probably best for you.

The WPMUdev method works well most of the time.

The WP No Category Base plugin hasn’t been updated in awhile, but still continues to work well.

If you have another method, please let me know!