Repetition can be annoying. If you post on your WordPress site even semi-regularly, then you may share my annoyance with the uncategorized category. You have to remember to change the little guy each and every time you’re about to publish a new post. If you don’t, you’re left with a published article with the “uncategorized” label, and that just looks unprofessional. Not to mention, chances are you have a posting category that you use often enough that you wish it was the default. Today we remedy this. Let’s look at how you can change the default post category in WordPress in just a few minutes’ time.
Change the Default Post Category in WordPress
Posts>Categories seems like the logical place to do this, and indeed you can add, delete, and rename categories from this screen. You can even rename and customize the uncategorized category here. However, you won’t find an option to change the default away from uncategorized.
For that, we need to go to Settings>Writing. The very first option at the top of this page is Default Post Category along with a dropdown list where you can select any of your current categories. Hooray!
Just select the category that you want to be your new default from the dropdown, click Save Changes at the bottom of the screen, and you’re set. That’s all there is to it! You now know how to change the default post category in WordPress. Hooray!
Bonus!
As an aside, you’ll notice that the option immediately below Default Post Category is Default Post Type. This corresponds to the Format box on your posting screen. If you’re on a theme that supports post formatting you can change the format options on the post screen to optimize your post structure for the type of content you are posting.
For example, say your next post is a photo blog of pictures you’ve taken on your recent trip to Paris. Changing the Format to Image would give you the ideal post structure for displaying image heavy content.
If you find yourself changing the post Format type frequently, you can change the Default Post Type under Settings>Writing to reflect the type you use most.
We hope you’ve found this helpful! Learning how to change the default post category in WordPress is a little tweak that can add up to save you a lot of time the longer you blog. If you run into any problems or have anything to add, feel free to fire away in the comments. Thanks for reading and happy blogging!
Thank you.