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Do you need to rename some categories on your WordPress site?
As your site grows, you might need to change the name of some of your categories or merge them with other categories.
In this article, we will show you how to properly rename categories in WordPress without affecting your SEO strategies.
Why Rename Categories in WordPress?
If you’ve recently created a WordPress website, then creating a good organizational structure will make it easier for your visitors to find your content and can help your site rank higher in search engine results pages.
That’s why WordPress offers categories and tags. You can learn how to organize your content effectively in our guide on best practices for categories and tags.
As you add more content, you may wish to improve the way you organize your posts, and you may decide to rename some of your categories.
Let’s have a look at how to properly rename categories in WordPress.
How to Properly Rename Categories in WordPress
You will find the WordPress category management area by visiting Posts » Categories. On this page, you can manage WordPress categories, edit existing categories, and delete unwanted categories.
There are two ways to rename categories. The first is to click the ‘Quick Edit’ link under the category you wish to rename.
The Quick Edit metabox will now be displayed. Here you can quickly change the name of the category.
You can also change the category’s slug, which determines the URL of the category page. For example, if the slug is ‘books’, then the category page URL will be:
https://example.com/category/books
Editor’s Note: You don’t have to change the slug if you’re only making a minor name change, but if you do, then you must set up a 301 redirect. We will show you how to do that later in this article.
Make sure you click the Update Category button when you’re finished.
The second way to rename a category also allows you to add a description of the category. To do this, you will need to click the ‘Edit’ link under the category you wish to rename.
This will take you to the category edit page. Here you can change the category name, slug and description.
WordPress also allows you to change the /category/ prefix in category URLs. This is called the category base.
To change it, go to Settings » Permalinks and scroll down to ‘Optional’. There you will see a form to change category base and tag base.
The default category base is ‘category’. Here, you can change it to anything you like, such as ‘topics’.
This would change the URL from http://www.example.com/category/your-category-slug/ to http://www.example.com/topics/your-category-slug/.
Merging and Bulk Editing Categories
As your site grows, you may decide to simplify your organizational structure and merge several categories into one.
This is useful if you find that you have a few categories that are very similar. By combining them into a single category, you will make your WordPress site less complex and easier to navigate.
It’s extremely important that you set up the 301 redirect using AIOSEO otherwise changing the category URLs could negatively impact your website search rankings.
Recently, one of our readers asked us how to clear cache in WordPress?
Your web browser, hosting server, and caching plugins can all serve cached content which can make it difficult for you to see the changes you made to your website right away.
Clearing your WordPress cache is also the first troubleshooting advice that you’ll often hear.
In this article, we will show you how to properly clear the cache in WordPress. We’ll cover browser cache, web hosting cache, and top WordPress caching plugins in this guide.
What is Caching in WordPress?
Caching solutions will store static versions of your website in a cache. This allows WordPress to skip running heavier PHP scripts every time your site loads.
Here’s an example of what the caching process looks like:
There are several different types of caching solutions available for WordPress. The most popular method is using a WordPress caching plugin like WP Rocket or WP Super Cache.
These plugins give you control over what files and media are cached, when the cache expires, when the cache is cleaned up, and more.
Depending on your hosting provider, you might already have WordPress caching built in. For example, managed WordPress hosting companies like WP Engine run their own caching solutions.
Popular WordPress hosts like Bluehost and SiteGround also have built in caching for their users.
If you’re using a web application firewall like Sucuri or Cloudflare to improve your WordPress security, then there’s also a cache to speed up your site and reduce downtime.
Finally, most modern web browsers will also store cached versions of pages on your web browser.
Why Clear Your WordPress Website Cache?
Sometimes the cache won’t realize that changes have been made to your WordPress website. Instead of loading the new version of your site, you’ll be stuck seeing an old version.
This will prevent both you and your visitors from seeing any updates you’ve made.
Clearing your WordPress cache ensures the most recent version of your website will always be live.
With that said, let’s take a look at how to clear your browser cache in WordPress. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the method you want to use.
If you prefer written instructions, then please continue reading.
Method 1: Clear Your Web Browser Cache
First, you need to clear your web browser cache. Most web browsers store static website content like stylesheets, JavaScript, images, and other website files to improve loading speeds.
But sometimes, web browsers may fail to realize a web page has changed. Instead of fetching a fresh copy, they’ll load the page from the cached version stored in your browser.
To clear your browser cache in Google Chrome, click on the menu icon, then select More Tools » Clear Browsing Data.
This brings up a popup where you can select the content you want to remove from the cache.
Make sure the ‘Cached images and file’ box is checked, then click the ‘Clear browsing data’ button.
Now, you’ve successfully cleared your browser cache. You can visit your WordPress blog to see if it’s loading the new version of your site.
If you’re still not seeing the changes you made to your website, then move on to the other methods in this article.
Method 2: Clear Cache in Your WordPress Caching Plugin
If you’re using a WordPress caching plugin on your site, then you need to clear your plugin cache.
Here’s how to clear your cache with some of the most popular WordPress caching plugins.
Clear Cache in WP Rocket
WP Rocket is the best WordPress caching plugin in the market. The best part about using WP Rocket is that it proactively builds your WordPress cache in the background, so your users are always served a cached version of your site.
It also makes it very easy to clear cached files with a single click.
Simply go to the Settings » WP Rocket and click on the ‘Clear Cache’ button in the plugin dashboard.
Now WP Rocket will now clear all of your cached files for you.
Clear Cache in WP Super Cache
WP Super Cache is another popular WordPress caching plugin. It allows you to clear or purge all cached content with a single click.
Simply go to Settings » WP Super Cache in your WordPress admin dashboard, and then click the ‘Delete Cache’ button in the ‘Delete Cached Pages’ section.
Now, WP Super Cache will delete all of the cached files from your website.
Clear Cache in W3 Total Cache
W3 Total Cache is a widely used WordPress caching plugin. Like the other plugins above, you can clear all caches with a single click.
You need to go to Performance » Dashboard and then click on the ‘empty all caches’ button.
W3 Total Cache will now delete all cached content for your site.
Method 3: Clear Cache in Your WordPress Hosting
Some WordPress hosting providers have built in caching options to help speed up WordPress.
Here’s how you can clear your web host cache in some of the most popular WordPress hosts.
Clear Cache in WP Engine
WP Engine is one of the top managed WordPress hosting providers. They have their own built-in caching solution, so users don’t need to install a caching plugin.
If you’ve made changes to your site, but they aren’t showing up, then you can clear the WP Engine cache from your WordPress admin area.
You need to click the ‘WP Engine’ menu item in your WordPress admin bar, select the ‘Caching’ menu option, then click the ‘Clear all caches’ button.
WP Engine will automatically purge every stored cache for your WordPress site.
Clear Cache in Bluehost
Bluehost is one of the best WordPress hosting providers and is officially recommended by WordPress. They have a built in caching solution that instantly improves your WordPress performance and speed.
Bluehost makes it easy to clear your WordPress cache from your WordPress admin area.
Simply log in to your WordPress admin dashboard, and you’ll see a ‘Caching’ button in the top admin toolbar. Hover over this, then click the ‘Purge All’ option.
Bluehost will now clear all files from your WordPress cache.
SiteGround is a leading WordPress hosting provider that’s known for speed and top-notch customer support. They offer a built-in caching solution to improve your website performance.
You can clear the SiteGround cache from your hosting account control panel as well as the WordPress admin area.
To clear your cache from your Siteground control panel, you need to log in to your hosting account dashboard and go to Speed » Caching under the site tool section.
Then, select the ‘Dynamic Cache’ menu option. Next, click on the menu icon next to your domain name and select the ‘Flush Cache’ option from the drop down.
Another way you can manage your Siteground cache is with the SG Optimizer plugin. First thing you need to do is install and activate the plugin. For more details, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you need to click the ‘Purge SG Cache’ button in your top WordPress admin toolbar.
The plugin will automatically clear your SiteGround WordPress cache.
Method 4: Clear Your WordPress Firewall Plugin Cache
If you’re using a WordPress firewall like Sucuri to protect your website, then there’s another layer of caching you’ll need to clear.
You can clear your Sucuri cache by going to Sucuri » Firewall (WAF) in your WordPress admin panel.
Then, select the ‘Clear Cache’ menu option and then click the ‘Clear Cache’ button.
Bonus tip: If you’ve recently moved your WordPress site, then you may also need to clear your DNS cache. This ensures you’re getting updated DNS information and accessing the newest version of your site. For more details, see our guide on how to clear your DNS cache.
We hope this article helped you learn how to clear your cache in WordPress. You may also want to see our step by step guide on how to create an email newsletter and our expert picks of the best live chat software for small businesses.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you comparing Substack vs WordPress and wondering which one is better?
Substack and WordPress are both publishing platforms that allow you to easily publish content online and sell membership subscriptions.
In this article, we’ll compare Substack vs WordPress to find out which one is the better platform.
Editor’s Note: Looking for a more affordable Substack alternative? We recommend ConvertKit. It has all the powerful features without the predatory pricing of Substack which takes 10% of your newsletter revenue.
Since this is a detailed comparison of Substack vs WordPress, here’s a quick table of contents:
Before we start with our in-depth comparison of the two popular subscription platforms on the web, it’s important that we cover the basics and highlight what makes these platforms stand out.
What is Substack?
Substack is an online newsletter publishing platform. It allows you to easily send newsletter emails to your subscribers.
You can have both paid and free subscriptions and Substack gets a share of all your paid subscription fees. Apart from newsletters, you also get a basic website, podcast hosting, and free
What is WordPress?
WordPress is the world’s most popular website builder. It allows you to easily make any kind of website you want. It works seamlessly with almost all popular email newsletter services to send newsletter emails.
You can have both free and paid newsletter subscriptions. Plus you can use it to make a podcasting website, eCommerce store, membership website, and more.
Note: When we say WordPress, we are talking about self-hosted WordPress.org website and not WordPress.com. For more details, see our article on the difference between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com.
What to Look for in a Subscription Platform
Choosing the right platform for your subscription offering is the most important decision you’ll make. Once you start growing it will be harder to switch platforms and you may lose users in the process.
Here are a few basic pointers that you should keep in mind when choosing your subscription platform.
Ease of Use – How easy it is to get started on your own
Costs – How much would it cost
Integrations – Can you connect it to other apps to grow your subscriber base
Data Portability – Can you move your data away
Keeping these parameters in mind, let’s take a look at Substack vs WordPress in detail.
Ease of Use
Most publishers are not website designers or marketers by profession. Choosing an easy-to-use platform helps you focus on what you do best and leave the technical stuff aside.
Substack: Ease of Use
Substack is incredibly easy to use even for absolute beginners. All you have to do is sign up and you will be able to start working on your content right away.
Substack is highly focused on writers and easy publishing. It comes with a minimalist editor where you can create your newsletter emails, articles, and upload podcast episodes.
You can choose whether you want an article to go to paid subscribers or everyone on a post-by-post basis.
Even though writing a post is incredibly easy. There is not much room for any creativity in the default substack editor.
WordPress: Ease of Use
WordPress is open-source software, which means you install it yourself and manage updates and backups. While this may sound a bit technical, WordPress is incredibly easy to install and use.
You’ll need a domain name and a hosting account to install WordPress.
We recommend using Bluehost, which is one of the biggest hosting companies in the world and officially recommended WordPress hosting provider.
They are offering a free domain name + a generous discount on hosting to WPBeginner readers. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.
Bluehost will automatically install WordPress for you and you can simply login to your WordPress dashboard under your account.
WordPress comes with an incredibly easy-to-use and powerful block editor. This allows you to create content on your website and design it any way you like.
To lock your premium content behind a paywall, you’ll need MemberPress. It is the best WordPress membership plugin and allows you to easily restrict content based on a user’s subscription plan.
Unlike Substack where you can have only one subscription plan for all users, you can create multiple subscription levels with different benefits.
To send our newsletters, you’ll need to connect WordPress to an email marketing service. We recommend using Constant Contact which is the best email platform for small businesses.
However, with WordPress, you can choose any email newsletter platform like Sendinblue, Drip, Convertkit, and more.
For details, see our article on how to create a paid newsletter in WordPress which has step by step instructions for beginners.
Winner: Substack
Cost of Running a Paid Subscription Service
The next important factor to consider is that how much it would cost to run a paid subscription service. Higher costs and low profitability could make it difficult to scale your business as you grow.
True Cost of Substack Paid Newsletter
You can send the free newsletter to your free subscribers. This helps you grow your audience and build a subscriber base. However, having only free subscribers is not very profitable in the long run.
You can remedy that by adding paid subscription option for your newsletter. This allows you to send exclusive content to your paid subscribers.
Substack allows you to use Stripe to accept payments. Stripe is available in select countries if you are not located in one of those countries then you cannot receive payments.
Both Substack and Stripe take their cut from each transaction. Substack charges 10% and Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents on each transaction.
This means if you charge $10 per subscriber then the Substack + Stripe fee will be 1.59.
This may not sound a lot but let’s suppose you have 100 paid subscribers each paying $10 per month. You’ll be paying $159 each month and $1908 each year.
Cost of a Paid Newsletter using WordPress
WordPress gives you the freedom to choose your own email platform, website hosting, plugins and tools. This gives you control over the costs and you can choose how much you are willing to spend on your paid newsletter subscription.
You can get website hosting with a free domain name via Bluehost for just $2.75 per month.
Pricing for email platforms varies. For instance, Constant Contact plans start from $20 per month and the pricing varies based on the number of contacts.
Similarly, you can start for free with Sendinblue which allows you to send up to 300 emails per day. After that, you can upgrade to their lite plan which allows you to send up to 10,000 emails per day for $25.
Apart from email marketing, you will need MemberPress to sell subscriptions which costs $179 for their basic plan.
You can use Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.net as your payment gateway. These payment gateways will have their own fees.
In the long run, WordPress gives you more freedom to cut down costs and increase your profits.
Winner: WordPress
Integrations Available to Grow Subscribers
In order to promote your paid newsletter, you’ll want to use third-party tools to grow your business. Let’s see how Substack vs WordPress perform in this category.
Substack Integrations
Substack is an all-inclusive platform with limited to no integrations.
It comes with limited SEO features built-in the platform. You can connect your own custom domain name, Google Analytics tracking ID, and social media profiles from the settings page.
To grow your subscribers, you will need to promote your Substack on social media platforms. This makes it a bit tricky for new writers to start earning right away.
Limited integrations also limit your potential to access other tools that may help you convert more visitors into paying subscribers.
WordPress Integrations
WordPress is an open-source platform with thousands of third-party integrations available. This allows you to easily get more subscribers for your paid newsletter.
With more than 59,000+ free plugins and thousands more paid integrations, WordPress gives you the freedom to use any tool you like to grow your business.
Following are some of the popular integrations and add-ons that will help you grow your paid newsletter.
All in One SEO for WordPress – A complete SEO solution for WordPress websites that helps you improve your website SEO and get more free traffic to your website from search engines.
OptinMonster – The best conversion optimization software on the market that helps you convert website visitors into paying subscirbers
WPForms – The best form builder plugin to easily create newsletter signup forms, contact forms, with its own payment and email marketing integrations.
MonsterInsights – An easy-to-use Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It shows where your visitors are coming from and track how users interact with your website.
SeedProd – Need a quick landing page for a new campaign? SeedProd lets you easily design landing pages for your website.
Both WordPress and Substack allow you to download your data and use it elsewhere.
Substack Data Portability
Substack makes it super easy to download all your posts, pages, and email list subscribers. You can simply go to the Settings page and scroll down to the ‘Export your data’ section.
From here you can download all your Substack data to your computer.
You newsletter email subscribers list is in CSV format which allows you to easily import subscribers into other email services. However, most email services will require users to opt-in again and many users may not resubscribe.
For posts data, you can use the Substack importer for WordPress to import the data into a WordPress website.
WordPress Data Portability
WordPress allows you to export all your data using the built-in export tools. This includes all your posts, pages, comments, users, etc. Simply go to Tools » Export page to download your export file.
Your newsletter subscriber data is safely stored with your third-party email service provider. Almost all reliable email companies let you easily export your email list which you can then use elsewhere.
Once again, if you import your email list into a new email service, then they may require users to opt-in again.
Winner Tie
Conclusion: WordPress vs Substack which one is better?
WordPress is better than Substack in terms of flexibility, scalability, and profitability. It gives you the freedom to grow your newsletter in different ways and unlocks access to much better tools and extensions to do just that.
On the other hand, Substack is better if you only want to easily send newsletter to non-paying subscribers.
You will not have the same flexibility as WordPress and if you want to switch to paid newsletter, then you will pay a significant amount to Substack.
If you don’t want to use WordPress, but still want a more affordable Substack alternative? We recommend ConvertKit. It has all the powerful features without the predatory pricing of Substack which takes 10% of your newsletter revenue.
We hope this article helped you compare Substack vs WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to get more traffic to your site or see how to create an online store to your existing website.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
