How To Change The WordPress Default Category

I get a fair amount of traffic here from people who are searching How To Change The WordPress Default Category.

They get directed to my How I Set Up WordPress post which does not explain how to change the default category … instead it is referring to the fact that I rename the default category at the start of setting up WordPress before adding any content.

If you want to know how to change the WordPress default category then you need to:

1. Select Options from the main menu.
2. Select Writing from the sub menu.
3. Change the value in the Default post category drop down list.
4. Click the Update Options button at the bottom of the page.
5. Done.

I can sympathize with all the people who want to change the WordPress default category. Allthough it sounds like it should be a simple task, I spend a good 15 minutes hunting around the admin panel trying to find out where I could make this change.

I guessed that it should be in the Mangage > Categories section of the Admin panel. But it’s not there.

I would recommend that you do not rename the default category once you have started adding content to your blog because it has the potential to change your permalink URL’s which is not a great idea.