Remove Parents
Sometimes you don’t want to show parent directories in permalink because they are not really necessary or because you know that in the future your child directory will change it’s parent.
Consider an alternative
Remove Parents shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 100+ sites and was last updated 19 years ago, and scores 25/100 on our health check.
- Small user base (100+ active installs)
- Very few reviews so far
- No update in 19 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 2.3 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Remove Parents stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| category | >100 |
| child | >100 |
| Parent | >100 |
| permanent | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
About Remove Parents
From the official readme · v1.0Description
Sometimes you don’t want to show parent directories in permalink because they are not really necessary or because you know that in the future your child directory will change it’s parent.
For example:
+Work in progress
–Site 1
–Site 2
+Work Finished
–Site 3
In this case Site 3 originally have been part of “Work in progress”, and on job done it has been moved under “Work Finished”.
So if you install this plugin your link will be transformed in this way:
domain.com/parent_category/child_directory/post_name => domain.com/child_directory/post_name
domain.com/category/parent_category => domain.com/parent_category
domain.com/category/parent_category/child_directory => domain.com/parent_category/child_directory
Installation
- Upload
remove_parentsto the/wp-content/plugins/directory - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
- Set your permalink structure as “/%category%/%postname%” (or something like “/%category%/%postname%.extension”)
- Set your Category Base empty.
- Test everything and let me know if you find some bug 😉
For developers
Is this your plugin? Show off the numbers.
Add a live badge to your site, docs or GitHub README. It updates on its own — no account needed.
Best Remove Parents alternatives
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FAQ
Remove Parents: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 28, 2026
Is Remove Parents free?
Yes. Remove Parents is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Remove Parents safe to use in 2026?
Remove Parents shows warning signs in 2026 — compare the alternatives below before installing. It runs on 100+ sites and was last updated 19 years ago, and scores 25/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Remove Parents?
Remove Parents is active on 100+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 8,373 times since it launched in September 2007. It was downloaded 88 times in the last 30 days.
Does Remove Parents work with WordPress 7.1?
Remove Parents is officially tested up to WordPress 2.3, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Remove Parents last updated?
The latest version, 1.0, was released on September 27, 2007 (19 years ago).
Who makes Remove Parents?
Remove Parents is developed and maintained by alekc.
What are the best alternatives to Remove Parents?
The most popular alternatives to Remove Parents are Pages with category and tag (50K+ installs), Search & Filter (50K+ installs) and Tag, Category, and Taxonomy… (40K+ installs).
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