Single Category Permalink

Description

Reduce permalinks (category or post) that include entire hierarchy of categories to just having the lowest category in the hierarchy.

By default, WordPress replaces the %category% permalink tag in a custom permalink structure with the entire hierarchy of categories for the post’s first matching category. For example, assuming your site has a hierarchical category structure like so:

Applications
  |_ Desktop
  |_ Web
    |_ WordPress

By default, if you have a permalink structure defined as %category%/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%, your post titled “Best Plugins” assigned to the “WordPress” category would have a permalink of:

https://www.example.com/applications/web/wordpress/2008/01/15/best-plugins

If you activate the Single Category Permalink plugin, this would be the permalink generated for the post (and recognized by the blog):

https://www.example.com/wordpress/2008/01/15/best-plugins

In order for a category to be used as part of a post’s permalink structure, %category% must be explicitly defined in the Settings -> Permalinks admin page as part of a custom structure, i.e. /%category%/%postname%.

For category links, %category% is implied to follow the value set as the “Category base” (or the default category base if none is specified). So if your category base is ‘category’, the above example would list posts in the ‘WordPress’ category on this category listing page:

https://www.example.com/category/applications/web/wordpress/

With this plugin activated, that link would become:

https://www.example.com/category/wordpress/

NOTE: The fully hierarchical category and post permalinks will continue to work. The plugin issues a 302 redirect to browsers and search engines pointing them to the shorter URL.

Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | GitHub | Author Homepage

Hooks

The plugin exposes one filter for hooking. Code using this filter should ideally be put into a mu-plugin or site-specific plugin (which is beyond the scope of this readme to explain). Less ideally, you could put them in your active theme’s functions.php file.

c2c_single_category_redirect_status (filter)

The ‘c2c_single_category_redirect_status’ hook allows you to specify an HTTP status code used for the redirect. By default this is 302.

Arguments:

• $status (integer) : The default HTTP status code

Example:

/**
 * Change the redirection HTTP status to a 302.
 *
 * @param  int $code The HTTP status code. By default 301.
 * @return int
 */
function scp_change_redirect_status( $code ) {
    return 302;
}
add_filter( 'c2c_single_category_redirect_status', 'scp_change_redirect_status' );

Installation

1. Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or download and unzip single-category-permalinks.zip inside the plugins directory for your site (typically wp-content/plugins/)
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress
3. Use %category% as a permalink tag in the Settings -> Permalinks admin options page when defining a custom permalink structure

FAQ

Will existing links to my site that used the full category hierarchy still work?

Yes, WordPress will still serve the category listings and posts regardless of whether it is of the full category hierarchy format or just the single category format. But do note that WordPress doesn’t perform any sort of redirects; it responds directly to the category/post URL requested.

Could this give the appearance that I have duplicate content on my site if pages are accessible via the full category hierarchy permalink format and the single category permalink format?

Whether this plugin is active or not, WordPress treats both types of category links the same. This plugin will however issue redirects for all of the non-canonical category and post permalink pages to point to the single category link version.

What can this plugin do for me if I don’t use `%category%` in my custom permalink structure?

In addition to handling custom permalink structures (used to generate permalinks for posts) that contain %category%, the plugin also shortens category archive links. WordPress by default generates those links in a fully hierarchical fashion which this plugin will reduce to a single category. See the Description section for an example.

Does this plugin include unit tests?

Yes.

Reviews

nice plugins

hangtotnenmua January 15, 2021

nice plugins! i love you! chup chup

Unstopable Thanks

Rabby January 18, 2020

Unstopable thanks, So far it can be said. This tiny plugin is very very helpful to make good url structure for big site, which is huge category and sub-category. [Note: I’m not good at English so much]

Great plugin!

dandeedo May 17, 2018

gives you full control of your category permalinks… Really great plugin, works well!

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

2.5.2 (2021-09-28)

• Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.8+
• Unit tests:
  • Change: Restructure unit test directories
    • Change: Move phpunit/bin/ into tests/
    • Change: Move phpunit/ into tests/
  • Change: Remove ‘test-‘ prefix from unit test file
  • Change: In bootstrap, store path to plugin file constant
  • Change: In bootstrap, add backcompat for PHPUnit pre-v6.0

2.5.1 (2021-04-30)

• Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.7+
• Change: Update copyright date (2021)

2.5 (2020-09-23)

• Fix: Default the $taxonomy argument of category_link() to ‘category’ to avoid a PHP warning/error
• Fix: Handle the possibility that get_category() could return null for an invalid category ID
• New: Add a TODO item about removing deprecated functions (which is not something I want to do just yet, hence the TODO)
• Change: Update docs for return value of category_link() to reflect that WP_Error or null are also possible values
• Change: Note compatibility through WP 5.5+
• Change: Restructure unit test file structure
  • New: Create new subdirectory phpunit/ to house all files related to unit testing
  • Change: Move bin/ to phpunit/bin/
  • Change: Move tests/bootstrap.php to phpunit/
  • Change: Move tests/ to phpunit/tests/
  • Change: Rename phpunit.xml to phpunit.xml.dist per best practices
• Unit tests:
  • New: Add tests for category_link(), post_link()
  • New: Add unset_permalink_structures() to unset configured permalink structures

Full changelog is available in CHANGELOG.md.