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](http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_taxonomy). Just set the `query_var` argument to `false` and WordPress will not recognize taxonomy page requests and simply 404. <?php add_action('init', 'wpse94193_register'); function wpse94193_register() { register_taxonomy('your_taxonomy', 'your_post_type', array( // other stuff here... '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.