How to remove or change word Category in WordPress URLs

You probably noticed that once you create a category for posts in your WordPress website, it’s link has word category in it. For example www.yoursite.com/category/tutorials. There’s nothing wrong having word category there, but some of you might want to have a cleaner url – for example www.yoursite.com/tutorials.

Luckily WordPress lets you remove word category, or change it with any other word easily. Here’s how you do it without leaving WordPress admin panel.

How to change or remove word Category from WordPress permalinks

WordPress URL structure has a dedicated settings page in WordPress admin panel. In order to change WordPress URL structure go to Settings >> Permalinks in WordPress admin panel.

By default URL structure settings page is set up like that:

So by default WordPress organizes links by date, and also has word /category in category pages.

First thing to do if you want to change it is to select Custom Structure, clear all the content on it’s text field, and click on buttons %category% and then %postname% – in that particular order.

Once we do that we could replace word category in WordPress URLs, or get rid of that word completely to have cleaner urls.

How to remove word Category from WordPress urls

To completely remove word /category from permalinks enter . (dot) into the Category base field, and save changes.

After saving changes changes your category page urls will change from

https://yourwebsite.com/category/some-category-name

to

https://yourwebsite.com/some-category-name

Now that’s more like it!

How to change word Category to some other word in WordPress urls

If you don’t want to get rid of word /category in WordPress permalinks, but want to change it to some other word (for example if you’re running non-English website and word category does not look right there), you can enter any word or phrase in Category base field. Just make sure there are no spaces or special characters in the phrase (you may use – if needed).

For example if you want to replace category with topics you just need to enter topics into Category base field.

Once you save changes your category page url will change from

https://yourwebsite.com/category/some-category-name

to

https://yourwebsite.com/topics/some-category-name

That’s it – your WordPress permalink structure is successfully updated!