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.

Here's a practical example of this in action:

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

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Video Guide

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Text and screenshot guide

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.

• Scroll down and click “Enable custom permissions for Categories”.

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

• 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”.

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.

No 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.

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: