Prevent Read Access for WordPress Category and Tag Archives

The PublishPress Permissions plugin allows you to prevent users from visiting and reading your site's category and tag archive pages.

For example, you can prevent public access to the “Blog” category on your site. We will use this as an example, but the same approach can work for all taxonomies.

  • Install the PublishPress Permissions plugin.
  • Go to “Posts”, then “Categories”.
  • Click “Edit” for your category.
  • Scroll down to the “Permissions: Read Posts in this Category” area.
  • Set “Anonymous” to “Blocked”.
Block Category Access

This will impact anyone who is not logged into your site and tries to visit either of these:

  • A post with the “Blog” category.
  • The “Blog” category archive page.

People without access to this category will only see a “Page Not Found” message.