Auto-Deselect Uncategorized

Automatically and visibly deselect the “Uncategorized” category (or your custom default post category) when another category is selected, and select it when no other categories are selected. Supports the WordPress 5.0+ Block Editor (Gutenberg).

Purpose

To prevent the Uncategorized category from being attached to posts that are categorized, of course.

“When you author a post in WordPress, it will automatically assign the post to your default category. This is determined by navigating to Settings > Writing and looking for Default Post Category. You can set the default category to a different one of your choosing, and you can even rename ‘Uncategorized’ to something that makes more sense for your site.

The challenge with the WordPress default category is that authors will frequently draft their articles and choose the appropriate category at the end of the process. All too often, they forget to uncheck the default category, so you have lots of mis-categorized, or double-categorized posts. In fact, you can see thousands of WordPress sites out there that have everything categorized under ‘Uncategorized’, the default setting in WordPress.” (GeekWire, 2015)

Support

Support is handled in the WordPress forums. Please note that support is limited and does not cover any custom implementation of the plugin. Before posting a question, please confirm that the problem still exists with a default theme and with all other plugins disabled.

Please report any bugs, errors, warnings, or code issues on GitHub.

Video Demonstration

1. Upload the plugin folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress

Are there any settings?

The plugin automatically targets the “Categories” taxonomy and uses the “Default Post Category” that’s set in Settings > Writing.

1. 

   Animation showing the Auto Deselect Uncategorized plugin in action on the post editor screen.

1.0.3

• Reorganize plugin tags

1.0.2

• Update readme (short description & tags)

1.0.1

• Improve build script
• Remove extraneous files from SVN repository

1.0

• Initial release