I've changed my permalinks to Custom: /%category%/%postname%/, and that (I suppose) caused my category archive pages to have two URLs. For example, category SPORT is available on /sport and /category/sport. I would like to keep only one. For some reason, pagination on /sport does not work. How do I fix this?
When I use one of the default permalinks options, it's ok and only /category/sport is available.
I've disabled all the plugins and activated the default theme, and still get this issue.
For example, category SPORT is available on /sport and /category/sport. I would like to keep only one.
I tried to reproduce that issue and I could confirm it's true, at least in WordPress v6.0.1 with the default setup, where WordPress is adding a rewrite rule (which is put at the very bottom in the rewrite rules array/list) with (.+?)/?$ being the regex (regular expression pattern) and index.php?category_name=$1 being the query.
And it's probably a core bug, or limitation in the WordPress rewriting system, but for now, you can fix the issue using the rewrite_rules_array filter like so:
add_filter( 'rewrite_rules_array', 'wpse_408488' );
function wpse_408488( $rules ) {
$permalink_structure = get_option( 'permalink_structure' );
if ( '%category%/%postname%' === trim( $permalink_structure, '/' ) ) {
unset( $rules['(.+?)/?$'] ); // remove the conflicting rewrite rule
}
return $rules;
}
So that code will remove the additional rewrite rule (/sport), which means the category archive would only be accessible at /category/<slug>, e.g. example.com/category/sport.
And you can add that to your theme functions file, and remember to flush the rewrite rules — just visit the Permalink Settings admin page without having to do anything.
