Remove "Category" from Wordpress

The worst thing about self-hosted Wordpress is that its URLs are unconventional. Even if you modify their permalink structure, you can't escape one major issue: the /category part of a URL. For instance, here's an example of a typical deep URL of a Wordpress site as we move backward from it toward the home page. Look for the "/category"

www.mysite.com/imports/honda »
www.mysite.com/cars/imports »
www.mysite.com/category/cars »
www.mysite.com

The fundamental flaw here is the third path, which introduces the word "category" into the URL against your will. While Wordpress does allow you to change what it is named, it has no option to remove it altogether.

Why Does /category Exist?

The main reason why the developers of Wordpress included the word "category" within their software is because of Wordpress Pages. Pages have a top-level URL structure, like "mysite.com/cars". Because of that fact, there is no way for it to co-exist with a category that is also named "/cars" without there being an additional divider before it, hence, "../category/cars". Currently, there is still no way to simply un-check or deactivate either Pages or Categories in Wordpress.

Upon doing a lot of research on the topic, I've come across Wordpress plugins that removed /category with disastrous effects. It seemed as though everyone hated this aspect of Wordpress. It seemed impossible to get Wordpress to behave like a real CMS because of that stupid word. Well, there is a miracle cure, and it works like a charm.

In your Wordpress admin section, visit Settings » Permalinks. Look for the section at the bottom entitled "Optional" that says:

If you like, you may enter custom structures for your category and tag URLs here. For example, using topics as your category base would make your category links like http://example.org/topics/uncategorized/. If you leave these blank the defaults will be used.

Below it is an input box for "Category base." Simply input a slash and a dot: " /. " That's it - you've effectively killed /category forever, banishing it to hell, where it belongs. Now, your site will continue to work without glitches. However, your Wordpress pages (i.e., mysite.com/cars) will be seen where category pages used to be. In other words, you'll no longer see that worthless category page that lists all Wordpress Posts within it. Instead, it will point directly to the Page of its same name.

This is absolutely GREAT for anyone using a breadcrumb trail (such as: Home > Cars > Honda), because the first level link in those situations (which would be "Cars" in this example) will now point to a Wordpress Page called "mysite.com/cars" instead of a list of Posts from the /cars category.

Finally, you can run a real website, especially an eCommerce site that won't force you to display annoying Wordpress Category pages!

I've used this little "slash-dot" trick with great results. It simply works, and that's all there is to it. However, there is a catch...and it lies in 3rd level (and up) categories. So, if you have the page:

mysite.com/cars/honda/sedans

...and you remove "sedans" and look at "mysite.com/cars/honda", you'll get a 404 error. However, if you go back into your admin section and delete the "/." from your Category Base and re-check that page, it works fine.

Unfortunately, this is an issue baked in to Wordpress' core. It will never truly work properly until the Wordpress developers wake up to the realization of this huge issue in navigation and SEO.