ArchiveWP has a setting that allows taxonomy terms to stay attached to posts when they are archived. When enabled, terms are copied to the Archive Categories taxonomy as posts are archived. This makes them available to filter content on the archive page. Learn more in ArchiveWP settings documentation.
Maintaining taxonomy terms during migration saves content managers a lot of time, but in some cases, you only want specific taxonomy terms to become archive categories, not all terms. This guide explains how you can include or exclude individual terms from being migrated when posts are archived.
Why Not Migrate All Terms
The number one reason why you might not want to migrate all taxonomy terms into Archive Categories is bloat.
Archive categories are one of the ways that people search and filter your archived content. If there are too many terms available for filtering, it may be overwhelming or lead to unhelpful results. Additionally, you want filters that return a good number of results. If a filter only returns one or two posts, it’s not helpful.
If you have a website with hundreds of tags or categories that are redundant and don’t return unique content, we recommend excluding those terms from migrating.
Include/Exclude Terms from Migration
The settings for including or excluding a taxonomy term when posts are archived are managed directly on the term itself on the taxonomy edit screen in the WordPress admin.
By default if the “Copy taxonomy terms to Archive Categories when archiving posts” setting is enabled, all terms are included. If you want to exclude terms, you can do that one-by-one or in bulk.
How to Exclude an Individual Term
There are a few ways to exclude an individual term.
Button in the Terms Table
As shown in the image above, ArchiveWP adds a column to the terms table on the taxonomy edit screen in the WordPress admin. In this example, we’re looking at the Categories screen for posts, which can be reached by going to [yourwebsite.com]/wp-admin/edit-tags.php?taxonomy=category.
The added column has a heading of ‘Archive Migration,’ and each row in the column displays visible text indicating whether the element is included or excluded. This text is a button.
Click the text in the Archive Migration column to toggle the status from included to excluded and vice versa.
Term Edit Screen
You can also change the status when editing an individual term.
Click “Edit” on an individual term and on the edit screen, check or uncheck the box labelled “Include in Archive Migration” to change the setting as needed.
This same checkbox is available when creating terms and can be set at the time of term creation.
How to Exclude Terms in Bulk
If you have many terms that you want to exclude at once, you can do that with a bulk action on the taxonomy page in the WordPress admin.
- Go to the taxonomy page for the terms you want to exclude.
- Check the select box next to the desired terms or select them all.
- In the Bulk Actions dropdown above the Terms table, select “Exclude from Archive Migration.”
- Click the Apply button.
- A success message will appear telling you how many terms have been excluded.
