Hi there,
I understand you would like to remove many categories at once.
You can use the TaxoPress plugin (https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-tags/) to do this.
After installing and activating the plugin:
1. Go to your site’s dashboard.
2. On the left sidebar, click on TaxoPress -> Manage Terms.
3. Since you are deleting categories, make sure Categories is selected in the yellow box at the top of the page (click on the Change selection button to save).
4. Click on the Delete unused terms tab.
5. Because the categories you are deleting probably have 0 posts, there’s no need to change the number under Minimum number of uses for each term:.
6. Click on the Delete rarely used button.
7. After the page refreshes, it may seem like nothing has happened. However, once you go to your site’s Post Categories page, all categories with 0 posts should now be deleted.
Let me know if you need further help.
TaxoPress looks like the perfect tool for this – thank you!
Unfortunately…
https://gyazo.com/d0769e6086a706dd9fd3335fbd3f3026
When I hit “Delete Rarely Used”, it thinks for a while, and then says there’s been a critical error:
https://gyazo.com/bac852515a6f1254f642b121a7db0c48
And all the spam categories remain.
Hi @gzucman
Seems there is no ready plugin to do that. But you can delete 999 category at a time. check this screenshot: https://prnt.sc/iHpa0f_B3_2O
Thank you, @kausaralm
unfortunately, if I try to do 999, or even less, like 100 at a time, it thinks for a while and then says “there has been a critical error on this website”
https://gyazo.com/c7d154cecac6e2e04cbea94be855efdc
When I reload the site after that the number of categories is about the same. It went down by 5, from 37,332 to 37,297.
Seems your hosting are not able to process this operation. From where your site is hosted??
There is few solution is here for solving critical error: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-fix-the-critical-error-in-wordpress/
