How to remove WordPress category from URL and have a custom pagination parameter/rewrite?

Question

I'm trying to remove the Category URI from the WordPress URL and have a custom pagination rewrite. I'll explain exactly what's happening below:

So I have a blog.

We have two (main) categories: "bar-talk" and "tutorials". I'll use "Bar Talk" for the example.

I've found with WordPress, I can actually visit both of these URLs without doing anything custom:

- Current: https://scotch.io/category/bar-talk
- Want: https://scotch.io/bar-talk

However, the pagination that is automatically created breaks:

- Current: https://scotch.io/category/bar-talk/page/2 (works)
- Want: https://scotch.io/bar-talk/page/2 (doesn't work)

This makes sense as we haven't done any custom rewrite yet. How do I get the second structure though? Then, following this, I'd like to do a rewrite on "page" so that we can do:

- Super want: https://scotch.io/bar-talk/drink-number/2

Some additional notes:

• We've successfully previously done a rewrite to have "https://scotch.io/category/bar-talk/drink-number/2" work. But we really don't want that category param as part of pagination anymore
• Anything with tags works fine: "https://scotch.io/tag/javascript/drink-number/2"
• Current permalink structure is "/%category%/%postname%"

Thanks!

Answer 1

Hm. Have you thought about doing some URL rewrites in .htaccess? RewriteRule ^category/bar-talk/page/([0-9]+)$ /bar-talk/drink-number/$1 [L,R=301] RewriteRule ^bar-talk/drink-number/([0-9]+)$ /index.php?category_name=bar-talk&page=$1 [L]

// @drizzlyowl

Answer 2

Okay, currently using this craziness. A combination of the "page" rewrite and modified WP No Category Base plugin. Seems to be working perfectly.

/*===========================================================
=            REMOVE CATEGORY / CUSTOM PAGINATION            =
===========================================================*/
register_activation_hook(__FILE__, 'no_category_base_refresh_rules');
add_action('created_category', 'no_category_base_refresh_rules');
add_action('edited_category', 'no_category_base_refresh_rules');
add_action('delete_category', 'no_category_base_refresh_rules');
function no_category_base_refresh_rules() {
    global $wp_rewrite;
    $wp_rewrite -> flush_rules();
}

register_deactivation_hook(__FILE__, 'no_category_base_deactivate');
function no_category_base_deactivate() {
    remove_filter('category_rewrite_rules', 'no_category_base_rewrite_rules');
    // We don't want to insert our custom rules again
    no_category_base_refresh_rules();
}

// Remove category base
add_action('init', 'no_category_base_permastruct');
function no_category_base_permastruct() {
    global $wp_rewrite, $wp_version;
    if (version_compare($wp_version, '3.4', '<')) {
        // For pre-3.4 support
        $wp_rewrite -> extra_permastructs['category'][0] = '%category%';
    } else {
        $wp_rewrite -> extra_permastructs['category']['struct'] = '%category%';
    }
}

// Add our custom category rewrite rules
add_filter('category_rewrite_rules', 'no_category_base_rewrite_rules');
function no_category_base_rewrite_rules($category_rewrite) {
    //var_dump($category_rewrite); // For Debugging

    $category_rewrite = array();
    $categories = get_categories(array('hide_empty' => false));
    foreach ($categories as $category) {
        $category_nicename = $category -> slug;
        if ($category -> parent == $category -> cat_ID)// recursive recursion
            $category -> parent = 0;
        elseif ($category -> parent != 0)
            $category_nicename = get_category_parents($category -> parent, false, '/', true) . $category_nicename;
        $category_rewrite['(' . $category_nicename . ')/(?:feed/)?(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$'] = 'index.php?category_name=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]';
        $category_rewrite['(' . $category_nicename . ')/drink-number/?([0-9]{1,})/?$'] = 'index.php?category_name=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[2]';
        $category_rewrite['(' . $category_nicename . ')/?$'] = 'index.php?category_name=$matches[1]';
    }
    // Redirect support from Old Category Base
    global $wp_rewrite;
    $old_category_base = get_option('category_base') ? get_option('category_base') : 'category';
    $old_category_base = trim($old_category_base, '/');
    $category_rewrite[$old_category_base . '/(.*)$'] = 'index.php?category_redirect=$matches[1]';

    //var_dump($category_rewrite); // For Debugging
    return $category_rewrite;
}

// Add 'category_redirect' query variable
add_filter('query_vars', 'no_category_base_query_vars');
function no_category_base_query_vars($public_query_vars) {
    $public_query_vars[] = 'category_redirect';
    return $public_query_vars;
}

// Redirect if 'category_redirect' is set
add_filter('request', 'no_category_base_request');
function no_category_base_request($query_vars) {
    //print_r($query_vars); // For Debugging
    if (isset($query_vars['category_redirect'])) {
        $catlink = trailingslashit(get_option('home')) . user_trailingslashit($query_vars['category_redirect'], 'category');
        status_header(301);
        header("Location: $catlink");
        exit();
    }
    return $query_vars;
}


register_activation_hook(   __FILE__ , 'pagination_flush' );
register_deactivation_hook( __FILE__ , 'pagination_flush' );

add_action('init', function() {
    $GLOBALS['wp_rewrite']->pagination_base = 'drink-number';
});

function pagination_flush() {
    add_action( 'init', 'flush_rewrite_rules', 11 );
}

Answer 3

No need to write any code u can just install Remove CPT base plugin and do some settings in this plugin and activate. link: https://wordpress.org/plugins/remove-cpt-base/