Force WordPress to Show Pages Instead of Category

7 comments

1. One possible solution is to not change the category base and leave as-is, but instead modify any output of a category link to strip the category base via a filter. This of course will result in a 404 if you haven’t created a page in place of where these links point, so creating a page for every category is required.

   function wpa_alter_cat_links( $termlink, $term, $taxonomy ){
       if( 'category' != $taxonomy ) return $termlink;
   
       return str_replace( '/category', '', $termlink );
   }
   add_filter( 'term_link', 'wpa_alter_cat_links', 10, 3 );
   

   You’ll probably want to test this thoroughly for any side-effects, use at your own risk!

   EDIT – altering just top level category links:

   function wpa_alter_cat_links( $termlink, $term, $taxonomy ){
       if( 'category' == $taxonomy && 0 == $term->parent ){
           return str_replace( '/category', '', $termlink );
       }
       return $termlink;
   }
   add_filter( 'term_link', 'wpa_alter_cat_links', 10, 3 );
   

2. I created the following, fairly simple function in order to make the pages a higher importance than categories when loading the content.

   (Note: this may not the best, but a simple way. I found an issue, when using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, it doesn’t insert the custom fields neither of the old, nor of the new page by default. Adding get_queried_object()->ID as the ACF get_field()‘s second parameter solved this. Test it carefully in your WP environment.)

   function loadPageFirst() {
       // get the actual category
       $actualCategory = get_category( get_query_var('cat') );
       // get the page with the same slug
       $matchingPage = get_page_by_path( $actualCategory->slug );
   
       // If no match, load the normal listing template and exit (edit if you are using a custom listing template, eg. category.php)
       if (!$matchingPage) {
           include( get_template_directory() . '/archive.php');
           die();
       }
   
       // Make a new query with the page's ID and load the page template
       query_posts( 'page_id=' . $matchingPage->ID );
       include( get_template_directory() . '/page.php');
       die();
   }
   add_filter( 'category_template', 'loadPageFirst' );
   

   You can include it in your theme’s functions.php. This looks to work OK with the Yoast SEO plugin.

3. There is a super simple and perfectly working answer here:
   https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32310453/make-wordpress-use-the-page-instead-of-category

   For the sack of completeness:

   Background

   • example.com is the domain
   • I have a WP page called “foobar” with content
   • I have a WP post category called “foobar”
   • I have a WP post entitled “fun things to do with foobars”, and the
     category is set to “foobar”

   Expectations

   • When I go to example.com/foobar, I want to see the page about
     foobars, not a WP category page that shows all blog posts with that
     category.
   • When I go to the blog post about fun things, the URL is
     example.com/foobar/fun-things-to-do-with-foobars/

   Setup

   Here’s my setup (it does not require any additional plugins or code edits) A couple of installed plugins are WP Rocket and Yoast on which I’ll focus in this thread.

   1. WP Dashboard->Settings->Permalinks

   2. Select “Custom Structure” and enter /%category%/%postname%/ in the field

   3. On the same page, change “Category base” to a single dot. “.” (no quotes, just a single dot/period/full stop

   I have Yoast installed, which I had set up to override the permalink settings, but I believe this messed up my task at hand.

   4. WP Dashboard->SEO->Advanced->Permalinks(tab)

   5. “Change URLs->Strip the category base…” = Keep

   6. Then you need to clear the cache. I use WP Rocket for caching, so I flushed the cache and everything now works the way it should.

   Edit: make sure you save your changes after steps 3 and 5

4. Depends. If you’re trying to set 2 different page with the same URL it’s not a good idea. But if you do not care about category pages you can redirect them to your pages.

    RedirectMatch 301 ^/category/(.*)$ /$1
   

   This code goes in .htaccess and redirect /category/page to /page/

5. The “WordPress way” to do this would be to create a custom php template for your category page, and apply your customizations there, rather than by creating a unique “Page.”

   There are also numerous plugins available that allow you to add images and other custom fields to the category archive page, which may be a better option if you would rather not modify theme files.

   Alternatively, I’d suggest adding a category base that is perhaps one of your primary target keywords

6. First strip the category in yoast
   No-index the category in yoast but before doing that the permalink structure should be set as
   /%category%/%postname%/

7. Sorry but y don’t have enought reputation for comment in @bencergazda answer.

   I find this the best solution. But i had a error with the image show in header theme, because don´t get the correct post-id.

   For solution i’ll add the text line in the code:
   “global $post; $post->ID = $matchingPage->ID;”

   The result

   function loadPageFirst() {
       // get the actual category
       $actualCategory = get_category( get_query_var('cat') );
       // get the page with the same slug
       $matchingPage = get_page_by_path( $actualCategory->slug );
   
       // If no match, load the normal listing template and exit (edit if you are using a custom listing template, eg. category.php)
       if (!$matchingPage) {
           include( get_template_directory() . '/archive.php');
           die();
       }
   
       // Make a new query with the page's ID and load the page template
       global $post; $post->ID = $matchingPage->ID;
       query_posts( 'page_id=' . $matchingPage->ID );
       include( get_template_directory() . '/page.php');
       die();
   }
   add_filter( 'category_template', 'loadPageFirst' );
   

   Best regards

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