How to completely disable a taxonomy archive on the frontend?

I have registered three custom taxonomies. All three of these custom taxonomies are attached to my custom post type.

There is only one taxonomy out of the three registered, that I would like not accessible what so ever on the frontend of the website.

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What is the best solution for this?

I have been playing around with specifying different arguments while registering the taxonomy, but nothing seems to work.

$args['show_in_nav_menus'] = false;
$args['query_var'] = false;
$args['public'] = false;

Should I just hook into template_redirect and do a is_tax() check? If it’s the taxonomy I want disabled, just redirect to the custom post type archive?

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4 comments

  1. s_ha_dum’s answer didn’t work for me, but this did:

    /**
     * Completely disable term archives for this taxonomy.
     * @param  string $taxonomy WordPress taxnomy name
     */
    function kill_taxonomy_archive($taxonomy){
    
        add_action('pre_get_posts', function($qry) {
    
                if (is_admin()) return;
    
                if (is_tax($taxonomy)){
                    $qry->set_404();
                }
    
            }
    
        );
    
    }
    
  2. WordPress taxonomy provides flexibilities to set its properties while registering it. To disable WordPress taxonomy archives, set “public” as “false” as shown in below example code. This will remove “View” action link from taxonomy screen and also redirect the user to website homepage when trying to access url of taxonomy manually.

    enter image description here

    Example

    // Register Custom Taxonomy 
    function custom_taxonomy() { 
      $labels = array( 
        'name' => _x( 'Taxonomies', 'Taxonomy General Name', 'text_domain' ), 
        'singular_name' => _x( 'Taxonomy', 'Taxonomy Singular Name', 'text_domain' ), 
        'menu_name' => __( 'Taxonomy', 'text_domain' ), 
        'all_items' => __( 'All Items', 'text_domain' ), 
        'parent_item' => __( 'Parent Item', 'text_domain' ), 
        'parent_item_colon' => __( 'Parent Item:', 'text_domain' ), 
        'new_item_name' => __( 'New Item Name', 'text_domain' ), 
        'add_new_item' => __( 'Add New Item', 'text_domain' ), 
        'edit_item' => __( 'Edit Item', 'text_domain' ), 
        'update_item' => __( 'Update Item', 'text_domain' ), 
        'view_item' => __( 'View Item', 'text_domain' ), 
        'separate_items_with_commas' => __( 'Separate items with commas', 'text_domain' ), 
        'add_or_remove_items' => __( 'Add or remove items', 'text_domain' ), 
        'choose_from_most_used' => __( 'Choose from the most used', 'text_domain' ), 
        'popular_items' => __( 'Popular Items', 'text_domain' ), 
        'search_items' => __( 'Search Items', 'text_domain' ), 
        'not_found' => __( 'Not Found', 'text_domain' ), 
        'no_terms' => __( 'No items', 'text_domain' ), 
        'items_list' => __( 'Items list', 'text_domain' ), 
        'items_list_navigation' => __( 'Items list navigation', 'text_domain' ), 
     ); 
        
     $args = array( 
      'labels' => $labels, 
      'hierarchical' => false, 
      'public' => false, // Set it to false, which will remove View link from backend and redirect user to homepage on clicking taxonomy link.
      'show_ui' => true, 
      'show_admin_column' => true, 
      'show_in_nav_menus' => true, 
      'show_tagcloud' => true, 
    );  
    
  3. I’m not sure why @chris-herbert wrote it the way he did, but if you add this to your function file, this will force any navigation to that archive to go to your 404 page.

    add_action('pre_get_posts', 'kill_taxonomy_archive');
    function kill_taxonomy_archive($qry) {
    
        if (is_admin()) return;
    
        if (is_tax('tax-slug')){
            $qry->set_404();
        }
    }
    
  4. To guarantee that your taxonomy is never queried on the front end, you could strip it from all front end queries.

    add_action(
      'pre_get_posts',
      function($qry) {
    
        if (is_admin()) return;
    
        $kill = 'genre'; // kill this taxonomy
    
        $tax_query = $qry->get('tax_query');
        if (empty($tax_query)) return;
    
        $relation = false;
        if (isset($tax_query['relation'])) {
          $relation = $tax_query['relation'];
          unset($tax_query['relation']);
        }
    
        foreach ($tax_query as $k => &$tax) {
          if (isset($tax['taxonomy']) && 'genre' === $tax['taxonomy']) {
            unset($tax_query[$k]);
          }
        }
    
        if (1 < count($tax_query)) {
          $tax_query['relation'] = $relation;
        }
    
        $qry->set('tax_query',$tax_query);
    
      }
    );
    

    Using a closure should make the callback hard to remove.

    You may also want to implement the redirect as you speculated but doing so wouldn’t prevent secondary queries in page templates or widgets from retrieving the taxonomy or could cause trouble if you try to redirect late in a page load.