Taxonomy settings

A managed taxonomy's settings are on the tabs General, Permalinks, Visibility, REST API, Labels, Fieldsets and Source. As with post types, most switches are Auto, Enabled or Disabled. There's no Editor tab, because term screens have no block or classic editor choice.

Hierarchy and order

• Hierarchical (on Permalinks) lets terms have parents, like Categories: "Europe → Portugal → Lisbon". Without it, terms are a flat list like Tags. WordPress shows hierarchical taxonomies as a checkbox list in the editor and flat ones as a tag input.
• Hierarchical URLs includes parent terms in term URLs: /genre/fiction/mystery/.
• Preserve term order (on Visibility) keeps terms in the order they were attached to each entry, instead of alphabetical. Turn it on if editors should be able to drag terms into order in a Taxonomy field.

Permalinks

Term pages live under the taxonomy key by default: /genre/mystery/. Custom permalink base changes that segment, with the same slug rules as post type permalinks. Prepend front base adds your site's permalink front (for example /blog/).

Warning

Changing the base moves every term page of the taxonomy. WordPress doesn't redirect the old URLs.

Visibility

Public, Publicly queryable (whether terms have front-end pages), Show admin UI, Show in admin menu, Show admin column (a column for this taxonomy in the post list), Show in quick edit and Available in nav menus.

REST API

Show in REST API is WordPress's own switch for the /wp/v2/… term endpoints. The block editor needs it to show the taxonomy's panel.

REST base is the segment those endpoints appear under. Leave it empty and WordPress uses the taxonomy key. It is separate from the VX REST module, which adds field values to those endpoints.

Fieldsets

A read-only list of the fieldsets whose Locations target this taxonomy's terms. Change it on the fieldset's Locations tab.

Technical details for LLMs

• Tri-state values: auto | enabled | disabled.
• Permalink base normalization matches post types. Prepend front base and Hierarchical URLs do nothing when the registrant set rewrite: false, unless a permalink base is set.
• Rewrite rules are dropped after vx-framework/update-taxonomy changes permalink settings; otherwise use vx-framework/flush-permalinks.
• Preserve term order is the WordPress sort taxonomy argument (config key sort). Drag-to-order in Taxonomy fields requires it.
• System taxonomies: link_category, wp_pattern_category, wp_theme, wp_template_part_area, nav_menu, post_format, plus anything without an admin UI or with a key starting with _.