I don't need 'view' page for my custom taxonomy

Question

I have a custom post type with a custom taxonomy. I don't link to the taxonomy on the page but from the admin anyone can visit the taxonomy/term url and the unstyled list page will be visible. How can I force wp to not use the default layout (index.php) for that listing? What's the best method? For example I creat a taxonomy template and I redirect it to the front page?

Answer 1

If you just want to "turn off" the public facing part of a taxonomy (eg. just use it for grouping), you can do that when you register it.

Just set the query_var argument to false and WordPress will not recognize taxonomy page requests and simply 404. This will work if you don't have pretty permalinks enabled.

<?php
add_action('init', 'wpse94193_register');
function wpse94193_register()
{
    register_taxonomy('your_taxonomy', 'your_post_type', array(
        // other stuff here...
        'query_var' => false,
    ));
}

You can also disable pretty permalinks by setting the rewrite argument to false (props otto).

<?php
add_action('init', 'wpse94193_register');
function wpse94193_register()
{
    register_taxonomy('your_taxonomy', 'your_post_type', array(
        // other stuff here...
        'rewrite'   => false,
        'query_var' => false,
    ));
}

If you do need to allow logged in users to view the taxonomy pages (can't tell from the question), that's different story.

Answer 2

Check out the Template Hierarchy. If your custom taxonomy is called custom_taxonomy, you should be able to create a template file called taxonomy-custom_taxonomy.php, and it could contain, for instance:

<?php
    wp_redirect( home_url() );
    exit;  // stop processing since we're redirecting
?>

(See the Codex page for wp_redirect() for more on redirecting in WordPress.)