Block Users from Adding a Category or Tag

In this guide, we'll see how to prevent WordPress users from adding a specific category or tag.

This guide was inspired by this customer request:

I want to make sure that the “article of the month” category should only be set by the administrator and not by the authors.

This guide relies on the PublishPress Permissions plugin, so please install that before you begin.

  • Go to “Posts”, then “Categories”.
  • Click “Edit” for the category you want to block.
Edit Category
Edit Category
  • Scroll down and click “Enable custom permissions for Categories”.
Enable Category Permissions
Enable Category Permissions

If you're doing this for Tags, the box will look very similar:

Enable Tags Permissions
Enable Tags Permissions
  • Click “Update”.
  • Scroll back down the page and look for the “Assign this Category to Posts” box. Here you can choose “Blocked” for any user role. You could also do the same for “Groups” and “Users”.
Blocked Category Assign

Here is how this box will look for Tags. There is no hierarchy in Tags, so won't see a second column, as you do in the image above.

Assign Tags Blocked

Now when anyone in the Author role creates a post they will not see the category that is “Blocked”. It will be impossible for them to create posts in this category.

Tags Categories Blocked
Tags Categories Blocked

If you have set a tag to “Blocked”, it will be possible for users to type in the name of the tag. For example, in the image above, the “Homepage featured” tag is blocked. However, this tag will automatically removed when the post is saved. This image below shows the post after it was saved:

Tags Categories Blocked After
Tags Categories Blocked After