How to Enforce One Category Per Post in WordPress

In our categories vs tags article, we recommend that you only select one category per post. However this can be difficult for beginners to get used to. In this article, we will show you how to enforce one category per post in WordPress. This will ensure consistency in how you sort your content.

Video Tutorial

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First thing you need to do is install and activate the Categories Metabox Enhanced plugin. Upon installation, you need to visit Settings » Categories Metabox Enhanced to configure the plugin.

By default the categories metabox contains checkboxes next to category names which allows users to choose multiple categories. With Categories Metabox Enhanced plugin, you can change it into radio button or select options. Choosing a radio and select option will restrict users to select only one category at a time.

If you have a lot of categories, then choosing the radio option will make the categories metabox unusually lengthy. In that case, you would be better off with the drop down select option.

Categories metabox usually appears on the sidebar of the post editor screen. You can adjust the position and priority of categories metabox using the position option.

Among other settings, you can change the title of the categories metabox to whatever you want. You can disable indent for child categories and restrict users from creating new categories.

That’s all, you can now save your settings and visit the post editor to see your new categories metabox in action.

We hope this article helped you enforce one category per post on your WordPress site. This plugin is also great for multi-author sites to prevent new authors from using multiple categories.

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