Description: As the name suggests this plugin will completely remove the mandatory ‘Category Base’ from your category permalinks ( e.g. `myblog.com/category/my-category/` to `myblog.com/my-category/`.
The plugin requires no setup or modifying core wordpress files and will not break any links.
Features
- Better and logical permalinks like
myblog.com/my-category/andmyblog.com/my-category/my-post/. - Simple plugin barely adds any overhead.
- Works out of the box – no setup needed.
- No need to modify wordpress files.
- Doesn’t require other plugins to work.
- Compatible with sitemap plugins.
- Works with multiple sub-categories.
Rating:
(19 votes, average: 4.79 out of 5)
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Size: 2.1 KB
Downloads: 3237 [Download Now]
120 Comments
Works great, thank you
I’ve used this for years and it works great: http://fortes.com/projects/wordpress/top-level-cats/
@David: Try this plugin, it doesn’t have the “Known Issues / Bugs” of the Top Level Cats plugin.
Does this also work for multiple-level-deep nested categories?
thanks a lot, finally this annoyance is gone as well. and so simple.
any cache should be rebuilt after activating the plugin.
bbb
@JamieO: Yes, it will work with nested subcategories.
Found bug(s) with it. Some of my pages work and some don’t.
Hi,
Thank you so much, I was one of the “unfortunate” ones that was using the other “top level” plugin mentioned above and then when 2.7 came out I got screw cause it was all buddy (hence if you didnt have .html) at the end it wouldn’t work,
I just installed YOURS and it works like a dream!
Thank you so much, If it wasn’t for the developers like you that provided all this cool stuff, well then it would just suck, but in fact people like you make it GREAT to be a blogger !
Thank you, you just made my day with this,
BTW: I found you on weblogs blog
Joseph
Does it break pagination (like the other)?
Hey thanks for a good SEO type plugin.Changing the /cats/ has to be better for SE and moving up a directory
Does this plugin work with category-pagination? Or does it brake pagination like the older / other one?
(Second try of the comment.)
@Joseph: Thanks for the kind words. People like you keep us motivated
@André Fiebig: Category pagination works fine.
@Nathan Rich: Can you show me some links that are not working?
I am facing a problem, it works perfect for TOP level categories, but sub-categories are giving 404 error, please help.
My subcategories are not showing: http://cruisetastic.com/cruise-deals-by-cruiseline/carnival-cruise-deals
The main ones are fine, but the 2nd level ones aren’t working.
Ideas?
@Chelle & @Sanjay: I have fixed the plugin to properly handle sub-categories. Please get the updated version.
First thank you for making this problem it works fine…
Although I have one problem, when I am showing cats with their category rss feed, I am getting page not found in the rss… eg
domain.com/top-levelcat/feed/ error
domain.com/top-levelcat/secondlevelcat/feed/ error
my permalink structure is
/%postname%/
I have also tried
/%category%/%postname%/
Have tried adding category to the url the address bar but still no joy, anybody else suffering this problem
Update if I use
/%category%/%postname%.html/
as a permalink it works, but really do not want todo this. would really just like to have
/%postname%/
Thanks
@George Snyder: I have added proper support for category feed permalinks, please update to the latest version. BTW, this plugin does not affect your post permalink structure so you can have ‘/%postname%/’ or ‘/%category%/%postname%/’ or anything.
Version 0.1 didn’t work with my %postname% permalink structure, but 0.3 seems to be working fine. Thanks so much for this plugin, it’s exactly what I was looking for!
Problem with tags.
I have categories and tags with the same name but different content. With No Category Base active, the tag archive outputs the content of the category with the same name (although still displayed as /tag/tag-name/). Can this be fixed?
Fixed! Now it will not override tags with the same name. Please update to the latest version.
Ok, you have been busy, thank you for the quick fix and reply. Just have a new problem now that didn’t happen before the update, I am using the language plug qtranslate that ads the lang locale in the address field, so as in
domain.com/nameofcat default lang
domain.com/fr/nameofcat postorcat in French
domain.com/de/nameofcat postorcat in German
So it now removes the /fr/ or /de/ from the url, not good, I understand if this is out of the scope of the plugin, but it would be really nice to have this back, as it was if you see what I mean…
qtranslate info
http://www.qianqin.de/qtranslate/forum/viewforum.php?f=3
http://www.qianqin.de/qtranslate/
Thanks George
@George: Since both plugins modify the category permalink I think it might be difficult to make them coexist. But I will look at it when time permits.
In the FAQ for the plugin, it says that the category will have priority over the page, whereas on this page it says that the page has priority over the category. I want the category to have priority for the exact reason mentioned in the FAQ, so that I can have them appear in my navigation. Is there a way to set the category to take precedence?
@Derek: The category will have priority. If it says otherwise somewhere its a mistake, let me know where and I’ll fix it.
The category isn’t taking priority on my installation. It is pulling up the blank page instead of the categories, though the categories pull up fine if I change the page slug.
Two categories with matching page slugs
- http://derekperkins.com/seatability1/news/
- http://derekperkins.com/seatability1/news/press-releases/
Two categories without matching page slugs
- http://derekperkins.com/seatability1/news/distributor-updates/online/
- http://derekperkins.com/seatability1/news/press-releases/
I do have the Redirection plugin installed, but I have checked multiple times and I have removed all references to my category / page slugs to remove any interference. I also tried deactivating it and I still encountered the exact same problems. Is there something else I should check?
Thanks for the prompt reply.
I forgot to mention, I’m running Wordpress 2.7.1 and the latest version of WP No Category Base.
I actually took my website live with those problems still active, so replace the links above with derekperkins.com/seatability1 with seatability.com.
I’m having the same issue as Derek. If I have a page and a category both called News, with WP No Category Base active, the page currently takes priority. I would prefer the category to take priority.
My workaround is to alter the page slug and set a redirect (Page Links To plugin) to the category name. However this creates unsatisfactory permalinks for subpages.
WP 2.7.1, latest No Category Base, latest Atahualpa theme.
@Shannon: I definitely agree with the ‘unsatisfactory permalinks for subpages’ comment. I can work around it for sure, but if the category can override the page slug as it is supposed to, that works perfectly.
The plugin works great however it does not redirect previous permalink w/ category base to the no-category base permalink .
This will hurt PR.
example;
I want to automatically redirect…
http://sitename.com/category/cat-name/postname
…to…
http://sitename.com/cat-name/postname
I didnt try it but according to the code categories should have had priority. I’ll look into it.
Hey,
Great plugin works well apart from if you have a category that currently has no posts in it, it just shows a 404 error, whereas when its not installed wordpress will just say no posts in this category.
Nevermind my last post, it seems because i downloaded it through wordpress it didnt work, downloading it from your site and installing it myself and it worked.
@mongobread: I wanted to keep this plugin simple and just do its main task. I believe there are plugins that can do the redirection the way you want.
I have a few cats that produce a 404 error on two of my sites. Please advise.
Thanks,
Ray
@Ray: Let me know the links.
http://discountgolfdrivers.net/blog/senior-golfers/
http://discountgolfdrivers.net/blog/the-masters/
http://discountgolfdrivers.net/blog/tiger-talk/
http://bargainpods.com/blog/all-about-espresso/
http://bargainpods.com/blog/cold-frappes/
If I deactivate and reactive if fixes the 404 errors.
The errors are only occurring on new categories.
Thanks,
Ray
Same issue with Ray, it doesn’t work for new categories. Need deactivate/reactive again, please fix it!
@iDope Thanks for this plugin! just installed it & removed the category base in one click – v.impressive – It’s awesome
thank you…
I’m waiting for your fix for the new category issue, please!
Thank you for you great work!
The plugin will now update the rewrite rules when categories are added/edited. Please update to the latest version.
iDope, Thank you very much!
I’ll try it soon.
Have you made any progress on why the categories aren’t taking priority over page slugs?
Thanks very much. It appears to be fixed.
Ray
Fixed, thank you!
Works a charm. Many many thanks !!
@iDope,
yup, i hope you include it in your next revision. using redirection plugin is tedious
keep up the good work
Hi, I have installed this plugin on a website I am designing and have run into a small issue regarding category feeds.
It seems to be working fine on all pages but when I set up a feed eg http://www.mysite.com/beta/category/category-name/feed/ it gets re-directed to just
http://www.mysite.com/beta/category-name/
Now could this be because of the fact the site is under a beta filename?
If not is there any fix for this? I have read comment above stating there were problems with category feeds but you said the latest version there is a fix for category feeds.
Any help you can give would be much appreciated. And great plugin!
Thanks.
So does it or does it not work when showing subcategories?
The problem is that it works perfectly if you show a link with a category. It does not work if you show links with subcategories. I have my permalink set as /%postname%/ and wondered if it has to be: /%categories%/%postname%/ but that didn’t work either.
Problem is that only one or the other works. If you get it out of the URL, it works everywhere but subcategories. If you put in the category slug, subcategories will work but other areas will not.
Has anyone got all of this to work? If you have, what are your settings.
@Mikey: It should work fine with subcategories and your post permalink structure won’t affect it. Make sure you have the latest 0.6 version.
@Rob: Shouldn’t the feed url be http://www.mysite.com/beta/category-name/feed/ ?
Thank you very much! This plugin works wonderfully & has solved what was an on-going annoyance.
Cheers, mate!
iDope, just want to say Thank You! Your plugin works great!
Be Well,
Dimitry
Thank you so much, If it wasn’t for the developers like you that provided all this cool stuff, well then it would just suck, but in fact people like you make it GREAT to be a blogger !
Hey guys, you don’t need a plugin !!!
Just put a period in the Category Base box. That’s it. It works perfectly well.
Mike
First, awesome plugin. Exactly what I needed.
A minor problem. It seems that capitalization makes a difference. For example, these will yield different results:
http://www.spacevidcast.com/sts-127
http://www.spacevidcast.com/STS-127
It would be awesome if case didn’t make a difference as technically people should spell out STS on our site, but realistically many won’t. Anything I can do on my side to change that behavior?
@Mike Tommasi: The problem with that is your URLs will have a period in them.
@Bencredible: I believe that is the default Wordpress behavior as well. Wordpress slugs are in lower case only.
@iDope, not 100% sure. I know that WP categories always want to be lower case, but check out this example (where both work but go to different places):
http://www.spacevidcast.com/sts-125/
http://www.spacevidcast.com/STS-125/
So WP can see both cases and guide them to different locations, but it can’t seem to do the same thing for both cases.
This plugin is working fine when shortening links to Pages.
However, when clicking on Category hyperlinks i get a “Page Not Found” response.
Any idea why this occurs?
@Bencredible: I am looking into the issue.
@Jamie: This plugin does *not* affect page links. It changes category links only. Can you show me the links it is giving a 404 on?
Hi IDope!
is this plugin working with Wordpress 2.8?
Thanks
I have the same problem as others. It works only for regular links to remove “category” but if you have a sub cat and subcat, it removes the word but you get a page not found error. e.g.
cars/audi/1980/
and then it will list all the car articles from the 1980 audi. That category list gets a page not found. I could never get any of these category removers to work with WPMU, ever. I wasted weeks on this. Glad to try it again and see but that was my original problem.
@Ricardo: Yes, it will work fine with Wordpress 2.8.
@Mike: I myself use Wordpress MU and and works fine with it. Can you give me a link where its not working?
I can but I’ll simply tell you since I have to turn it off… who knows, maybe it is an httaccess, conflicting plugin, but it didn’t work when I tried the first time. I will install it on my new blog and test.
mysite.com/vehiclesblog/cars/audi/
What will happen is that links will be rewritten as the above instead of this:
mysite.com/vehiclesblog/cateogry/cars/audi
The problem is the above link yields a 404 error with the plugin. The link is rewritten properly but the server doesn’t know where it is. However, if you type in the URL as above with category in it, the page works for wordpress. Using the plugin it is ONLY in that usage.
Let me as you this – do you need to have anything as the baseurl? Right now I have nothing there.
I have released an updated version that will handle redirections from the old category links. It uses 301 permanent redirect which will transfer your PR to the new link and is good for SEO.
Brilliant plugin. Thank you for your time in developing this. This is something that WP should implemented from the very beginning.
Will this new updated version solve the subcategory issue that is stated above? The problem is that the two category level still yields the category word in the URL. I’m wondering if this isn’t solved and, if not, how neat it would be to be able to change it like, e.g. from category to “car” or something like that. You can’t enter that into Wordpress or it will use it every time, no matter how deep.
@The Law Professor: I haven’t been able to reproduce that issue on my blogs. Let me know the links if its happening on yours.
Try this:
http://boldplan.com/scripts/hideurl/2/
I haven’t used it on here but you’ll see what wordpress does with this site. Implementing the plugin causes the nonfunction in Mike’s posts.
Hi,
thanks for the plugin.
I have problems with WPMU and BuddyPress.
1. Some categories get 404, i don’t know why.
http://www.apfelcenter.de/reviews/software-reviews/
http://www.apfelcenter.de/reviews/hardware-reviews/
2. Blogs of Wordpress don’t come in. they’re catched by rewrite rule and are searched for equal categories. I use the subdirectory method of WPMU.
@halk: The software-reviews category is displaying fine. The hardware-reviews category is giving a 404 possibly because there are no posts in it (which is the default Wordpress behavior).
The links below bypass the Wordpress url rewriting engine (and hence this plugin) and should work weather the plugin is enabled or not.
http://www.apfelcenter.de/?category_name=reviews/software-reviews
(works, as does its rewritten version)
http://www.apfelcenter.de/?category_name=reviews/hardware-reviews
(404, indicating that either this category doesn’t exist or it has no posts)
Missed the second part of your question. In MU, are you copying the plugin to the ‘mu-plugins’ folder or the ‘plugins’ folder? Plugins copied to the mu-plugins folder do not require activation and hence their activation hook never gets called. This is what updates the cached rewrite rules initially. However it is easy to refresh the rewrite rules just by visiting the ‘Permalinks’ page in the Wordpress admin.
thanks for your reply. Actually I managed the 1. problem with debugging an own plugin. I actually tested with disabling plugins, but maybe I forgot one.
any ideas about 2. problem?
I forgot to refresh.
Should I try with moving the plugin into mu-plugins?. I’ll try that.
The ONE and ONLY that work for %/%category%/%postname%/
))) Thank you very much!
This great plugin DOES work but only for main categories. It does not work for subcategories – that’s the problem I’m having. It’s really great but when you add it in for subcategories they break. I’ve unfortunately confirmed this at least in MU. I’ll see what happens in regular MP but I’m guessing it is the same.
If your MU is using sub-directory based blogs that might cause a problem as that changes the path. It works fine with sub-domain based MU blogs (which I use).
Subdomain is different than subdirectory. I hesitated to use subdomain due to SEO and the fact that finagling with subdomains can complication many things, at least from what I saw. Personally I think it would be a nice way to break things up on my site but not sure it’s worth the potential SEO hit for content on a site. But I digress – it just doesn’t work with sub-subdirectories, two levels.
/carsblog/audi/204sg/
This breaks and leaves page not found.
Man, i have to say this
Thank so much for your support. My blog will never launched without your help.
First, for anyone doubting this plugin, it works exactly as it says. Brilliant!! It worked from the beginning, and I didn’t even have to clear my cache.
Unfortunately, I had to deactivate it.
My website has 2 pages that are a big focus. I currently have 2 main homepage posts redirecting to these pages. Long story, but to easily do this, I have created a category for each of these 2 posts. This plug-in gives the category priority over the page as it says. I didn’t find this to be a problem for me until I was finishing my testing. If this isn’t a problem for anyone, I recommend it to you.
iDope: Is there a way for me to make the page have priority over the category when both the page and category have the same name?? Or do you have plans for the next version to allow the user to select what they want to take priority?
Thanks for your time.
Actually, if you (or anyone) can advise me how to easily redirect a specific category to the specific page (while using your plug-in), that should be a good solution to my issue. I really love this plug-in and want to use it.
Please help!!
This plug-in works in some instances but falls down in others.
Kudos to iDope for building it, but there is a FAR, FAR simpler way to do this in the “Permalinks” page in your wordpress back-end
All you need to place in the category base field is a period. JUST ONE SINGLE, SOLITARY PERIOD!!
Go and try it!!
@Jamie: Please let me know the cases where it fails for you.
The period workaround does work but that adds a period to all your URLs kinda defeating the purpose.
@iDope
I found it unable to affect the links as provided by my theme – perhaps i was setting it up wrong, i don’t know
The period doesn’t add a period to the URL. I was expecting it to, but it really doesn’t!
@Jamie: Let me know the link to your blog.
You can’t see the period when you mouseover the link as the browser automatically normalizes the link (’./’ is treated as the same directory on most file systems, i.e. ‘/’). If you view the source of the page the periods in the links will be visible (and they will be visible to search engine bots as well).
Followup to my question from yesterday: if I change a category name (so I don’t have to worry about the 2 categories that will have the same page link), is there a way I can redirect those 2 categories to a specific page?
Works as advertised, does what i was looking for. Makes wordpress a tad closer to a cms. I hope that it is at the wordpress plugins repository so that we will be getting the updates automaticly.
Thanks for the great plugin! It works exactly like it’s supposed to.
Do you think you could add the same thing for tags in the url?
Great work. I was having a problem where I could access a wordpress category, but I would get a 404 error on anything that was on /page/2/ or beyond. This problem every since upgrading to wordpress 2.8. After googling for hours, i stumbled upon this fix. I figured I would try it and sure enought, it fixed my category problem.
This plugin works just as it should compared to others I’ve tried. I’d like to know if you have any plans to add removing /tag/ from tag urls?
Hey there!
first of all thanx a bunch for this great plugin. this is what i was searching for a while.
now, that i have installed and activated it.
and set the permalinks, custom to category/post.html
i can have the link for my posts to-
myblog.com/category/post.html
perfectly.
though, once i added a few sub-categories, its still showing the same way- myblog.com/category/post.html rather than myblog.com/category/sub-category/post.html?
Any help or suggestions?
Thanx and Regards
@Trey: There is a redirection plugin that does does that.
@SolidState: Yes, this plugin is available in the Wordpress plugins repository. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-no-category-base/
Thank you for sharing your lifetime with us, works great
Hi,
Did you manage to solve the problem with the qtranslate plugin?
Is there a solution?
thank you
congratulationss for the plugin
like others, thanks for creating and sharing this.
Great job, but has one bug.
It does not work with names (urls) of SUBCATEGORIES writen in non english languages. Russian for example in my case. ;-(
I try setlocale, but it does not help me.
Trouble is somewhere in WP engine?
using with WPMU 2.8.4a and everything is working flawlessly.
Many thanks
With WPML multilingual plugin this plugin works on archives but not on single post pages.
Putting \. in the Category base without any plugin seems to work, but the URL in source actually has a /./ instead of /category/ – but the links actually work. Not sure if this dot thing is a problem – will this come back to bite me?
@Mike Tommasi: This plugin *only* changes category permalinks (and by extension, category feed permalinks) as I have mentioned several times. Archive and single post links should remain the same as before.
OK thx, but the problem is interaction with WPML. I use a different URL for each language, when I add your plugin all URLs go back to the english language one.
in reading through the docs + comment threads, i see that this plugin is supposed to handle subcategories, creating a URL with /category/subcategory/postname/ . (though i also see some people want that and have trouble making it work.) what i’m looking for is the opposite: i want to include _only_ the top-level category in the permalink, regardless of whether the particular post has subcategories. can this plugin do it?
thanks.
Thanks man, you solved all the problems I had with Top level category
You are a saint! I’ve been trying to fix this dang problem for far to long. Thanks so much!
Main page pagination works fine, but category pagination cracks and gives a 404 error. my categories are written in Arabic (UTF8). any ideas? Thanks
btw, i am not using any other plugin, just yours
This plugin was incredible! My pages were getting a 404 not found error but this worked flawlessly. Thank you!!!
Hey iDope,
Great work, congratulations. Just one request tough:
Your plugin removes more than the category-base, which makes it incompatible with multilanguage plguins that ad a locale indication to the URL (e.g. /pt/ for portuguese etc). I use WPML, and i have tested locally to come to this conclusion.
Any chance you would take a look at the issue soon? Your plugin is a blessing multi-lingual sites can’t have!
Thanks, Eduardo
This plugin really owns. It should be a default option in Wordpress to have it this way.. but… well… :f
Simple and working – thanks.
Installed easily and worked perfectly on version 2.8.5. It completely solved my problem. Thank you very much!
Hi iDope, great plug-in.
But i ran into a problem with WPML as Tommasi above, but for me it works for he posts and pages but with Categories and Archive lists i get 404.
Any ideas?
Hi,
should this work also for tag base? It seems that it does not.
wow great one
This is truly a great plugin. I was trying to remove the category base from code but that we very frustrating. Thanks for this time saving plugin. I really like your captcha too.
Thank You very much!
Excellent WP plugin, thanks for sharing this.
iDope, thank you!
This plugin is amazing, and adds something to wordpress that I have been wanting for many years now.
I remember searching long and hard about 2 years ago for something like this.
Just activate, and it works flawlessly, you have thought of everything!
Many thanks for the great plugin! Keep up the great work.
The only problem is if you name the same name title of a category and a page. Wordpress will go nuts which one will be displayed.