add_rewrite_rule to remove /category/ from permalink

Question

I have many permalinks across my site that looks like this:

http://www.example.com/market/category/slug-here/

and would like to hide /category/ for all permalinks that contain it, like so:

http://www.example.com/market/slug-here/

I tried to use the following rule but did not find success. Anyone know why?

add_rewrite_rule('market/(.*)', 'market/$matches[1]', 'top');

I've verified that the htaccess is being added. No redirects occur though.

note:

I've moved on from this project. As others confirm answers work I'll look into selecting the best answer.

Answer 1

I believe the rewrite rule your wanting to alter is this

category/(.+?)/?$ index.php?category_name=$matches[1] category

to do what you want it should just be a case of adding the following rewrite rule in your functions.php

add_rewrite_rule('(.+?)/?$', 'index.php?category_name=$matches[1]', 'top');

this should work but might conflict with other rules so that will be worth checking.

Answer 2

If you are looking to get this done super quickly, I would say just use the WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast. You can find the option to disable the category base under 'Permalinks' in the options panel.

I took a screen shot but I can't show it to you b/c I just started using this site. Anyway, the option is right at the top of 'Permalinks' if you do decide to use that plugin.

Answer 3

Add the following to your .htaccess file in between the <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> tags that were created by WordPress:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}
RewriteRule ^market/(.*)/(.*)$ market/$2 [R=301]

Your .htaccess should looks like the following if it hasn't been modified by another plugin:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# Custom Rewrite
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}
RewriteRule ^market/(.*)/(.*)$ market/$2 [R=301]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

As a result it will do the following:

http://www.example.com/market/category/slug-here

Redirects to:

http://www.example.com/market/slug-here