Changing RSS feed URL structure

Question

I am in the process of creating a wordpress website, and I just have one issue left - RSS feeds.

Currently, the website has a .htaccess file blocking access to /category/* pages. It was part of a requirement that the site is not obviously Wordpress, and /category is a decent indicator of that.

Each category is fronted by a page, which displays the category content - so /category/news becomes /news.

However, RSS feeds always seem to point to /category/xxx/feed - is there a way to remove this /category/ part? So people could view the RSS feed at http://example.com/news/feed ?

I've tried fiddling around with the .htaccess file, but it's the one area of building a web application I'm not 100% sure on. Every search has returned with results of how to point a feed to Feedburner instead, which is not what I am looking to do at all.

Answer 1

After some thought - this can be achieved with some creative abuse of existing feeds:

• easy part - redirect category feeds to page comment feeds
• hard part - make page comment feeds think they are category feeds

Something like this:

Category_Feed_At_Page::on_load();

/**
 * Repurpose page feeds for category of same name feeds.
 */
class Category_Feed_At_Page {

    static function on_load() {

        add_action( 'pre_get_posts', array( __CLASS__, 'pre_get_posts' ) );

        add_action( 'do_feed_rdf', array( __CLASS__, 'do_feed' ), 9 );
        add_action( 'do_feed_rss', array( __CLASS__, 'do_feed' ), 9 );
        add_action( 'do_feed_rss2', array( __CLASS__, 'do_feed' ), 9 );
        add_action( 'do_feed_atom', array( __CLASS__, 'do_feed' ), 9 );
    }

    /**
     * Change page's comment feed into category feed.
     *
     * @param WP_Query $query
     */
    static function pre_get_posts( $query ) {

        if ( $query->is_main_query() && $query->is_page() && $query->is_feed() ) {
            $name = $query->get( 'pagename' );

            require_once( ABSPATH . 'wp-admin/includes/taxonomy.php' );

            if ( category_exists( $name ) ) {
                $category = get_category_by_slug( $name );

                $query->set( 'category_name', $name );
                $query->set( 'cat', $category->term_id );
                $query->set( 'pagename', '' );

                $query->is_page         = false;
                $query->is_comment_feed = false;
                $query->is_category     = true;
                $query->is_singular     = false;


                remove_action( 'do_feed_rdf', array( __CLASS__, 'do_feed' ), 9 );
                remove_action( 'do_feed_rss', array( __CLASS__, 'do_feed' ), 9 );
                remove_action( 'do_feed_rss2', array( __CLASS__, 'do_feed' ), 9 );
                remove_action( 'do_feed_atom', array( __CLASS__, 'do_feed' ), 9 );

                remove_action( 'template_redirect', 'redirect_canonical' );
            }
        }
    }

    /**
     * Redirect real category feed to page feed.
     */
    static function do_feed() {

        if ( ! is_category() )
            return;

        $name = get_query_var( 'category_name' );
        $page = get_page_by_path( $name );

        if ( ! empty( $page ) ) {
            wp_safe_redirect( get_post_comments_feed_link( $page->ID ) );
            die;
        }
    }
}

Answer 2

I found (in my opinion) the best and easiest way to do this, and thought I should leave it as an answer in case anybody stumbles upon this thread.

I downloaded and installed the WP No Category Base plugin and that did exactly what I needed.

Unfortunately, I never got around to trying the other answers (had to move on to a more urgent project), so I can't clarify if any of them work.

---

Updated Link: No Category Base (WPML)

Answer 3

You do know that you can change the tag and category slug prefixes on the permalinks settings page, right?

So if it bothers you to have the "category" in "/category/news", but accepts having "/cat/news", you can change that there.