I'm rebuilding a site in which I am required to change the URL structure for archive pages to something that WordPress doesn't handle by default. I have a custom post type named product, which has a custom taxonomy product-category. I need to rewrite the /product-category/{term-slug} archive pages for this taxonomy to just be /{term-slug}.

So I am trying to make a rewrite rule that catches /{term-slug} pages, and rewrites them to /product-category/{term-slug}, ONLY if no other rules were matched.

I can do this to catch and rewrite these pages correctly:

function rewrite_product_archive() {
    add_rewrite_tag('%product-category%', '([a-z0-9\-_]+)');
    add_rewrite_rule(
        '^([a-z0-9\-_]+)/?$',
        'index.php?product-category=$matches[1]',
        'top'
    );
}
add_action('init', 'rewrite_product_archive');

With this, I can navigate to a /{term-slug} page and it will show the archive /product-category/{term-slug} page correctly. However, this now causes all actual pages to stop working and 404.

So I tried changing the third parameter in my rewrite from top to bottom, and doing a flush. This now makes my regular pages work again, but now the /{term-slug} rewrites have stopped working and they 404 now.

So essentially, I just need to follow the rewrite ONLY if no other rules were matched. Is that possible?

I'm rebuilding a site in which I am required to change the URL structure for archive pages to something that WordPress doesn't handle by default. I have a custom post type named product, which has a custom taxonomy product-category. I need to rewrite the /product-category/{term-slug} archive pages for this taxonomy to just be /{term-slug}.

So I am trying to make a rewrite rule that catches /{term-slug} pages, and rewrites them to /product-category/{term-slug}, ONLY if no other rules were matched.

I can do this to catch and rewrite these pages correctly:

function rewrite_product_archive() {
    add_rewrite_tag('%product-category%', '([a-z0-9\-_]+)');
    add_rewrite_rule(
        '^([a-z0-9\-_]+)/?$',
        'index.php?product-category=$matches[1]',
        'top'
    );
}
add_action('init', 'rewrite_product_archive');

With this, I can navigate to a /{term-slug} page and it will show the archive /product-category/{term-slug} page correctly. However, this now causes all actual pages to stop working and 404.

So I tried changing the third parameter in my rewrite from top to bottom, and doing a flush. This now makes my regular pages work again, but now the /{term-slug} rewrites have stopped working and they 404 now.

So essentially, I just need to follow the rewrite ONLY if no other rules were matched. Is that possible?

• url-rewriting
• rewrite-rules
• archives

• That's what you get if the rule comes last in the list, are you sure your rule actually matches the URL though? Have you confirmed this with a debug plugiin such as monkeyman rewrite rule analyser? – Tom J Nowell ♦ Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 16:05
• @TomJNowell I figured it out. See my answer. – chrispytoes Commented Oct 1, 2020 at 17:40

1 Answer 1

It turns out it was because the default category archive pages do not require the URL to start with /category. WordPress already matches the path /{category-slug} for the default category taxonomy archive.

I fixed it by changing the default category archive rewrite to start with /category.

function move_category_rule($rules) {
    if(array_key_exists('(.+?)/?$', $rules)) {
        $val = $rules['(.+?)/?$'];
        unset($rules['(.+?)/?$']);
        $rules['category/(.+?)/?$'] = $val;
    }
    return $rules;
}
add_filter('rewrite_rules_array', 'move_category_rule');