category urls

Is there any way for WordPress template tags (like <?php the_category(); ?> to generate a link to “ROOTDOMAIN/NAMEOFCATEGORY” instead of “ROOTDOMAIN/category/NAMEOFCATEGORY”? For example, if you take a look at one of my posts, https://www.mildlyhotpeppers.com/comics/posts/comics-now-every-weekday/, there’s a “Back to Posts” link at the top. If you click it, you end up at https://www.mildlyhotpeppers.com/comics/category/posts rather than https://www.mildlyhotpeppers.com/comics/posts. (The root of this WordPress installation is in a comics folder, hence there’s a /comics/ between the domain and the category.) On my site, “category/posts” generates the same thing as just “posts”, and I don’t want visitors visiting the one with “category” in front.

Also, when I use the posts_nav_link at the bottom of the page found at https://www.mildlyhotpeppers.com/comics/posts, the “Previous Entries” link points to https://www.mildlyhotpeppers.com/comics/posts/page/2/, which results in a 404. I noted that https://www.mildlyhotpeppers.com/comics/category/posts/page/2/, however, works. Would anyone know why this happens and how I can fix it?