Last Updated on July 1, 2019 by Dave McLean
I want to remove the default WordPress post category of ‘Uncategorized’, but how can I do it?
When creating a new WordPress website, one of the very first things I do is remove the post category of ‘Uncategorized’ from WordPress. But it’s something that takes a few steps to accomplish. Here are the steps you can take to remove the default WordPress post category of ‘Uncategorized’ and replace it with something much more appealing and relevant to your blog.
Step 1: Make your way to the ‘Categories’ section
For the first step, make your way to your WordPress admin area, go to the Posts menu and then to the Categories sub-menu.
Step 2: Create a new post category
To remove the ‘Uncategorized’ category, we first have to create a new category. The new category will eventually become the default category for all new posts.
You should now see the Add New Category section making up the left-hand side of the page. The existing post categories can be found on the right-hand side of the page. Default installations of WordPress have the one post category of ‘Uncategorized’. Let’s focus on creating a new category by filling out the new category information.
In the Name field type in the name of your new blog category name. After that, type in a slug in lower case in the Slug field. It’s a good idea to make this the same or similar to the text in the Name field. My example has the category of ‘WordPress’ therefore it makes sense for me to have the slug of ‘wordpress’.
You can ignore the Parent Category drop-down menu and the Description text field for now. Click the Add New Category button to save your new post category.
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Step 3: Make your new category the default post category
There is one thing we need to do before we can remove the ‘Uncategorized’ post category. We need to make the newly created post category the new default category for your WordPress posts.
Go to ‘Settings’ in the main WordPress menu, and then to ‘Writing’. At the top of the Writing Settings, there should be a ‘Default Post Category’ drop-down menu. This should be showing ‘Uncategorized’ as the default post category option. Click on this drop-down menu, and change this to your new post category (or ‘WordPress’ in my example).
Once you have made the category change in the drop-down menu click the Save Changes button. This is at the very bottom of the page so you may need to scroll down the page.
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Step 4: Remove the ‘Uncategorized’ default post category
We can now remove the Uncategorized post category from WordPress. Make your way back to the ‘Posts’ menu and then to the ‘Categories’ page.
When you look at the Uncategorized post category on the right-hand side of the page, there should be an empty checkbox next to the category. This is showing that it is now possible to delete the category.
Hover over the row that the Uncategorized category is in. You should see the word ‘Delete’ in a red colour. Click on this red text. This will make a popup appear asking you to confirm that you want to delete the Uncategorized post category from WordPress. Now click OK.
Well done! You have removed the undesirable category from your WordPress website!
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Conclusion
The removal of the ‘Uncategorized’ post category from WordPress involves quite a few steps because it requires two different pages in separate sections to complete the process. But once it is done, you are free to make a much more attractive default post category for your WordPress posts.
I hope this has been a useful quick tip, and one you can remember for your next WordPress project. Leave a comment below, and make some awesome projects with WordPress everyone!
