We all have seen that sneaky little category – “Uncategorized” in our WordPress backends and posts. If you’ve ever wanted to remove the uncategorized category in WordPress, you aren’t alone. Whenever we forget to add a category to any post, WordPress by default files it under uncategorized. And if you make a mistake of leaving it so, the “Uncategorized” comes up in your posts. This makes things look very unprofessional. Unfortunately, you cannot delete the default uncategorized category in WordPress. But there’s another good news, you can definitely rename uncategorized category in WordPress.
Why Rename Uncategorized Category in WordPress?
WordPress, by default, comes with two different taxonomies – Categories and Tags. Each of your WordPress posts must be filed under at least one category.
In case you forget to categorize a post, it is automatically filed under your default category. In WordPress, the default category is titled ‘Uncategorized’.
Generally, you can visit Posts » Categories if you wish to delete a category. However, you cannot delete a default category unless you create another default category.
So, to solve this, you can either rename uncategorized category to something better, or you can set a new default category that isn’t named uncategorized.
Rename Uncategorized Category in WordPress
Since it is not possible to delete a default category, you’ll need to rename it. Visit Posts » Categories page in your WordPress Dashboard. You’ll see the Uncategorized category. Click on Edit.
You will get to the Edit Category page. Here, you can see options to edit the category. You can change the name, and edit the slug here.
You are free to change the URL slug if your site is not live or indexed by search engines.
However, if you change the URL slug in your live site, it will result in 404 errors when search engines or users visit the old URL.
Rename uncategorized category into something you think will be more useful. And that’s it.
Change Default Category in WordPress
If you don’t want to rename uncategorized category or delete the uncategorized category altogether, you’ll need to change the default category.
To change the default category, make sure you have a category other than uncategorized in your WordPress. If you have one that you want to use by default, you can use the same. If not, you can create a new category by visiting Posts » Categories to create a new category.
Now, to change the default category, go to Settings >> Writing page. You’ll see that the first option is the default category.
Select the category you want to use as default from the drop down menu. Save you changes and it’s done.
Now your posts will be categorized under the category you chose as default if you forget to assign a category to a post.
However, posts that were previously filed as uncategorized will not be moved to the new category. You’ll need to edit the posts to change their categories.
Otherwise, you can delete the uncategorized category and the posts filed under uncategorized will be categorized under the new default category.
That is all that’s there to it. We hope this post helped you to rename uncategorized category and also to change the default category in WordPress.
If there are more tips or tutorials you’d like us to share with you, please feel free to let us know through the comments.