Wordpress subcategories return 404 in custom template

Question

I have a custom Wordpress theme and a main menu on top. This menu has links to different pages, one of them is a link to a Category (archive). It works fine for any first level category, but if I link to a child category with the full path, then I get a 404.

So this works: http://www.domain.com/my-level1-category

But this doesn't: http://www.domain.com/my-level1-category/level2

However this works: But this doesn't: http://www.domain.com/level2

I have a custom category.php file that is loaded when I only put one category in the URL; if I add the parent category/categories, then I get a 404 page. I would like to show categories under the category in the URL, and if there are none, I don't want a 404 page anyway, I'd like to show something else instead.

My settings are:

Permalinks:

• Custom structure: /%category%/%postname%/
• Category base: . (because I don't want /category/ in the URL).

What am I missing? This sounds like something simple but I haven't been able to fix it.

Answer 1

I have seen the magic "." break a lot of sites paginations and do errors to such issues as yours (return status 404 for subcategories). Try installing a plugin named "WP No category base" (link below) and remove that dot from the category base. Save permalinks a few times after installing plugin and hope that works (it did for me!).

http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-no-category-base/