I have a problem with the main categories. They keep on disappearing from time to time. Subcategories are still there but when the main categories disappear the URLs of the subcategory pages change.
Instead of /category/main category-name/subcategory-name/
It becomes /category/subcategory-name/
I have to reload all the main categories. After that I have to move the subcategories under the related main categories. Took me 2 days.
I will greatly appreciate your help in fixing this problem, so the main categories do not disappear again. This is the 5th time in 3 years.
Thank you,
Tony Hisir
The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]
Welcome to WooCommerce Support. I’d be happy to help you with this.
From what I gather, the category permalinks change sometimes. Correct?
I have to reload all the main categories. After that I have to move the subcategories under the related main categories. Took me 2 days.
I’m not sure that I fully understand. Could you elaborate further on how you the main categories are being reloaded, please?
Furthermore, can you please share a screenshot of what you see at that screen? That will help us understand the issue. I’d recommend utilizing a tool like https://snipboard.io/ for sharing it here.
Hi @copperrefections can you please go to Settings > Permalinks and simply click Save. Don’t do anything else, but that. Then clear your cache on both server and local browser.
“colorful-earrings” is the parent category and “horse-earrings” is the subcategory.
The main / parent category disappears. I do not know how and why. I noticed this when the URL of the subcategory becomes;
/category/horse-earrings/
instead of
/category/colorful-earrings/horse-earrings/
I spent 2 days creating the main/parent categories again and put the subcategories under the parent categories. Subcategories are still there so I do not have to create them again. But I have to search them find them and put them under the respective parent categories after I create them.
I already did that. They are working OK now. But I am afraid that they will disappear again.
I as mentioned this has happened before. I would like to fix the problem so it does not happen again.
I as mentioned this has happened before. I would like to fix the problem so it does not happen again.
I understand this has ever happened before. So that I can understand your site better, could you share a copy of your site’s System Status report? You can access it through WooCommerce > Status. Select ‘Get system report’ and then ‘Copy for support’ (after scrolling down a bit).
Once done, please paste it here in your response or through a text-sharing service like https://gist.github.com/.
Thanks for sharing that – It seems this is an intermittent issue, which can be quite tricky!
Checking your System Status Report, I notice the following plugins:
Disable Bloat for WordPress & WooCommerce: by Disable Bloat – 3.4.2
LiteSpeed Cache: by LiteSpeed Technologies – 6.0
Wordfence Security: by Wordfence – 7.11.0
When the issue first popped up (3 years ago), do you perhaps recall if any of the above mentioned plugins were currently active? If so, it’s possible that one of these might be interfering with how categories are stored or displayed, causing them to vanish.
This being said, if any of those were active at the time the issue first surfaced, can you try deactivating this, as it may just resolve the issue.
In the meantime, I’d like to take a look at an fatal errors that may be logged. Can you please navigate to WooCommerce → Status → Logs and share a copy of any fatal error log found there.
Is there are way to make a backup of all the categories; parent and subcategories? I will use the backup until we figure out the problem and solve it.
Certainly! You can export your categories, including both parent and subcategories, using the built-in Product export feature which can be found when navigating to WooCommerce > Products:
This will create a CSV file containing your categories’ data that you can later import back into your site if needed.
You can read more about exporting and importing product data here:
Thank you very much for all the information. I really appreciate it.
I have been using those plugins for a while. I do not know if these plugins are the cause.
I went to WooCommerce → Status → Logs There were errors from the Profile Builder plugin. I already told them about this. They said would be fixed in the next update.
I export the product categories. Thank you for the advice.
I will keep an eye on this. Hopefully it would not happen again.
I went to WooCommerce → Status → Logs There were errors from the Profile Builder plugin. I already told them about this. They said would be fixed in the next update.
Ah, gotcha – thanks for letting us know!
Since this has been marked as resolved, feel free to create a new topic if you need any further help. We’re happy to help should the issue happen to pop up again. 🙂
Also, if you have a minute, we’d love it if you could leave us a review:
I have been using those plugins for a while. I do not know if these plugins are the cause.
Apps, as well as Themes change every day & week. So does WP core. With that comes many changes and often it’s related to these things. That’s the beauty of being in an open source platform. Software is always scaling and will for its entirety. That’s why it’s best to update things in a staging environment before doing so on a live site.
