Do you have a website with breadcrumbs? Have you noticed that the breadcrumb links are taking your visitors to a page they don’t want to be on, or do you just not like them because it clutters up your site and makes it look messy? Well, there’s an easy way to remove those pesky breadcrumbs from your WordPress blog site! In this post, we’re going to show you how. Read on for more information.
First of all, what are breadcrumbs?
You might have noticed them on a lot of websites. They’re the links that lead from one page to another in a hierarchical fashion, e.g., Home > Animals > Dogs & Pets > Retrievers. They’re also referred to as an outline path and used by search engines like Google to connect one page to another in a website. WordPress blog sites have breadcrumbs by default.
1. Turn off automatic generation of Themes API Breadcrumb Links
To turn off the API for generating a menu based on a page’s title and its hierarchy, add the following snippet to your WordPress theme’s functions.php file or a site-specific plugin:
/** Disable WP_API_Breadcrumb generation */ add_filter( ‘wp_page_menu_args’, ‘__return_false’ );
2. Delete the automatic breadcrumbs from the Theme’s Code
This method will teach you how to remove breadcrumbs from your WordPress blog or website without using plugins.
First of all, make sure you are using a child theme of the current active base theme. If not, create one!
Next, open your theme’s header.php file and find this line:
<nav class=”breadcrumb”>
Now delete it. This will remove the default breadcrumbs from your website or blog completely. However, if you have added any custom breadcrumbs to your theme, you will want to make sure they are deleted.
Open your theme’s navigation.php file and find this section:
<?php wp_list_pages(‘depth=1&title_li=’); ?>
Delete the whole thing to remove all of the custom breadcrumbs from your website or blog.
3. Delete the Breadcrumbs Using Utility Plugins
Utility plugins help you to edit your WordPress blog’s theme through an easy-to-use interface. Now, let’s see how to remove breadcrumbs using one of these plugins: Easy Theme and Plugin Editor.
This plugin has a built-in option to remove breadcrumbs from your WordPress theme without any fuss. Just follow the steps below: #) Go to Dashboard > Easy Theme and Plugin Editor.
#)Under the plugin list, find “Breadcrumbs” and select it.
#) Click on the edit option located under Breadcrumb Paths section.
#) Delete all the paths of your website or blog.
#) Click on the Update option to save changes.
4. Remove Breadcrumbs Using Developer Plugin for WordPress
Description: This plugin acts as a replacement for Easy Theme and Plugin Editor. If using this plugin, go to Settings > Developer and scroll down to find “Breadcrumb Paths”. Just delete the whole path to remove breadcrumbs from your blog or website.
5. Using WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast
This plugin helps you to optimize your blog’s SEO and content management. To remove breadcrumbs using this plugin, go to Dashboard > Titles & Metas. Scroll down to find “Breadcrumb Path” and delete your website or blog URL to remove breadcrumbs.
6. Disable Breadcrumbs Using a Plugin
You can also use WordPress SEO by YOAST, WP No Category Base, Remove Query Strings from Static Resources. Just install the plugin, activate it, and you are done.
7. Manually Delete Breadcrumbs Using PHPMyAdmin
If you are familiar with the database and its operations, you can also opt for manual methods to remove breadcrumbs from the WordPress site or blog. Just follow the steps given below:
#) Log in to your cPanel account and click on SQL Database.
#) Create a new database and give some names to it.
#) Next, open the newly created database in phpMyAdmin.
#) Select “wp_posts” table from drop-down menu.
#) Now click on the Edit option located under the Structure section.
Why use Breadcrumbs?
Breadcrumbs are used for three main reasons:
- For the user’s benefit, they know where they are and how they got there. They can click back up the hierarchy if needed. This is especially important on eCommerce sites and sites with lots of content.
- Breadcrumbs can help search engines understand the site structure and connect pages. Some say Google uses breadcrumbs as a ranking signal for how well connected your web pages are to each other.
- They’re generally user-friendly and look nice – at least if they’re done properly.
So what’s the problem?
There’s nothing wrong with breadcrumb links if they’re done right and aesthetically, they can look nice on your site, but there are a few issues that arise from their use:
– They clutter up a web page and make it harder to read.
– They decrease the overall usability of your site.
– They take up valuable space on a web page and can reduce readability.
What is the solution?
The solution depends on whether you want to remove them from all pages or just those that appear now. There are many easy ways to do this. We’ll take you through three of them here.
1) Use the < !– start breadcrumbs –> code in your template files to stop breadcrumbs from showing up on all pages (or set it up to only show breadcrumbs on certain pages).
2) Use a plugin to disable breadcrumb links or remove them from individual web pages.
3) Edit your theme’s files directly. This is a little more difficult and not recommended for beginners.
1. Use the < !– start breadcrumbs –> code in your template files to stop breadcrumbs from showing up on all pages (or set it up to only show breadcrumbs on certain pages):
This is the easiest way to disable breadcrumbs on your WordPress site and a quick solution for those who don’t want the hassle of installing a plugin. Find the template files that show breadcrumbs on your site and go through them one-by-one removing the code from each file. Keep in mind that if you have any page templates, you need to remove the code.
If there are no breadcrumbs in your site’s template files, then it’s safe to assume that all pages will show breadcrumbs when viewed. That means that disabling this feature on an individual basis won’t be necessary. Just go through and delete or comment out all code between the < !– start breadcrumbs –> and < !– end breadcrumbs –> tags in every file to stop the links from showing. Here’s an example of what you should delete:
<!– <?php if ( is_page_template( ‘page-templates/breadcrumbs.php’ ) ) echo ‘<p>’ . __( ‘Breadcrumb:’ , ‘breadcrumbs-simple’ ) . crumbs_get_the_title() . ‘</p>’; ?> <?php endif; ?–> –>
And here’s the code that should be left:
<?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
<!– <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> –> <?php the_content(); ?> <?php endwhile; // end of the loop. ?>
2. Use a plugin to disable breadcrumb links or remove them from individual web pages:
Many of you don’t want to alter your template files or aren’t comfortable doing it. Instead, you’d like breadcrumbs removed on an individual page basis. This can be done with the Hide Breadcrumbs plugin. Basically, this does modify the code in your WordPress theme’s functions file so that all breadcrumb links are removed from individual web pages. This plugin requires editing your theme’s file, and it should be installed and activated before you edit your theme files. Most WordPress users won’t be comfortable modifying their themes, though, so we recommend that you move on to the next option.
Conclusion
All the methods described above allow you to remove links from your WordPress site. These links can be removed via code and plugin, and both techniques do the same thing.