Premmerce Permalink Manager for WooCommerce: remove product-category, shop slug from URL

To remove the /product-category base from your WooCommerce URLs, install the WooCommerce Permalink Manager plugin and toggle off the Product category slug — your category pages then load from a clean, base-free URL. The premium version adds automatic 301 redirects, so links to your old URLs are forwarded rather than breaking into 404s. With default WooCommerce, you can change the base but not remove it entirely, which is why a plugin is the reliable route.

Woocommerce Permalinks Manager is developed to improve current WooCommerce url configuration features and provide better display and extra capabilities for your online store SEO, according to the WooCommerce SEO Audit we conducted recently.

How to remove the product-category slug from WooCommerce URLs

1. Install and activate WooCommerce Permalink Manager.
2. In your dashboard, open the WooCommerce Permalink Manager page.
3. Under URL generation options for categories, choose Category slug so the URL is built from the slug alone (e.g. yoursite.com/category).
4. Premium: turn on Create redirects to automatically add 301 redirects from the old URLs.
5. Save your changes.

Is it safe to remove the product-category slug?

Yes — as long as redirects are handled. WordPress uses the /product-category base to tell category pages apart from other content, so stripping it out by hand risks old links resolving to 404s. That’s what makes editing permalinks manually fiddly. WooCommerce Permalink Manager avoids the problem: the premium version automatically creates 301 redirects from your old category URLs to the new base-free ones, so existing links, bookmarks,  and rankings carry over. With default WooCommerce, you can change the base but not fully remove it, which is why the plugin route is the safe one.

Ways to remove the product-category slug

• WooCommerce Permalink Manager (recommended) — removes the base from category URLs, and on premium adds automatic 301 redirects so nothing 404s.
• Permalink Manager Lite — a free alternative that edits the permastructure.
• Yoast SEO — its permalink settings can strip some category prefixes.
• Custom code — editing rewrite rules directly; possible, but higher-risk and harder to maintain.

The only plugin you need to manage your WooCommerce Permalink

The main plugin features:

• Removing /product-category base from URL.
• Removing /product from URL.
• Removing all the prefixes from URL, leaving just the category or product name.
• The ability to generate a product URL in such a way that only its slug can be seen.
• The ability to generate a product URL in such a way that it consists of a product and a main category slugs.
• The ability to generate a product URL in such a way that it consists of a product slug and its categories hierarchy.
• The ability to generate a product category URL in such a way that only its slug can be seen.
• The ability to generate a product category URL in such a way that only its slug and categories hierarchy slugs can be seen.
• The ability to choose a main category to generate a product URL.
• Automatic adding of the ‘rel=canonical’ attribute to duplicate pages to improve SEO.

The additional premium features of the plugin:

• The ability to remove the base from the product tags URL.
• Automatic adding of 301 redirects to duplicated pages to improve SEO and site navigation.
• Breadcrumbs Support.
• Replace the product slug with an SKU.
• Adding a suffix to the product and category URL.
• Premium support.

You can buy the premium version of this plugin here: WooCommerce Permalink Manager Premium

WooCommerce Permalinks Manager Demo

You can see how it works on the Storefront theme here: https://storefront.premmerce.com .

You can see how it works on the SalesZone theme here: https://saleszone.premmerce.com .

Plus, you can create your personal demo store and test this plugin together with Premmerce Premium and all other Premmerce plugins and themes developed by our team here: Premmerce WooCommerce Demo.

This plugin is 100% compatible with:

• base WooCommerce functionality
• Yoast SEO
• WPML WooCommerce Multilingual
• all the Premmerce plugins

Installation

A free version of WooCommerce Permalink Manager can be downloaded and installed from the official WordPress plugin directory:

WooCommerce Permalink Manager (Premium) can be activated in three ways:

1. You can buy it on Premmerce.com and after that download the Premium version of the plugin from the ‘My subscriptions’ tab of your Personal Account.
2. You can buy and download the plugin Premium version archive in your site dashboard on the ‘Upgrade’ page.
3. As WooCommerce Permalink Manager (Premium) is a part of the Premmerce (Premium) assembly, you can activate it on the ‘Addons’ tab.

After the archive has been downloaded, follow the steps below:

1. Log in your site dashboard and go to the ‘Add New’ page.
2. Click ‘Download plugins’.
3. Choose the downloaded plugin archive.
4. Click ‘Install’.
5. Click ‘Activate’.
6. Enter the license key (you can find it in your Personal Account) and click ‘Agree & Activate License’.

Note

If you upgrade the free version to the Premium version, all the settings of the WooCommerce Permalink Manager free version will be saved and ported to WooCommerce Permalink Manager (Premium).

The ‘WooCommerce Permalink Manager’ page in the dashboard

URL generation options for categories:

• Use WooCommerce settings – a category URL will be generated according to the settings on the ‘WooCommerce Permalink Settings’ page.
• Category slug – a category URL will be generated only from its slug: http://your.site.loc/category

• Full category path – a category URL will be generated from parent and child categories slugs: http://your.site.loc/parent-category/category

URL generation options for products:

• Use WooCommerce settings – a product URL will be generated according to the settings on the ‘WooCommerce Permalink Settings’ page.
• Product slug – a product URL will be generated only from a product slug: http://your.site.loc/sample-product

• Product slug with primary category – a product URL will be generated from a product slug and its direct parent category: http://your.site.loc/category/sample-product

• Full product path – a product URL will be generated from a product slug and its categories: http://your.site.loc/parent-category/category/sample-product

Additional settings:

• Use primary category – ‘Yoast SEO’ primary product category will be used to generate a product URL (for the correct operation of this option, you need to install and activate the Yoast SEO plugin).
• Add canonicals – it adds a canonical meta tag to random or duplicated pages.

Premium features:

• Remove product tag base – a product tag URL will be generated without ‘product-tag’ base.
• Create redirects – it automatically creates 301 redirects from random and duplicated URLs to new ones, which have been generated by using the plugin.

You can buy premium version of this plugin here: WooCommerce Permalink Manager Premium

Yoast SEO XML Sitemap

All changes that are made with the help of WooCommerce Permalink Manager are also saved in the Yaost SEO XML Sitemap.

Further Work and Development of the Plugin

We’ll be very grateful if we get your feedback and ideas on the plugin development as they all matter to us. So write to us at https://premmerce.com/contact-us/. As we continue developing our products, we’ll test the plugin for compatibility and add the new features to make it really great.

FAQs

How do I remove the product-category from a URL in WordPress?

Install WooCommerce Permalink Manager, open its settings, and set the category URL to Category slug. Save, and your category pages drop the /product-category base.

Will removing the slug break my URLs or cause 404s?

Not if redirects are in place. Premmerce’s premium version adds automatic 301 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones, so existing links keep working.

Can I remove the product-category slug without a plugin?

Default WooCommerce lets you change the base but not fully remove it. You can edit rewrite rules with custom code, but it’s higher-risk and harder to maintain — a plugin is the safer route.

What’s the difference between changing and removing the slug?

Changing swaps /product-category for a different word; removing takes the base out entirely so only the category slug shows. Premmerce can do both.