Member Avatar for darren2005

Hi, does anyone know why I would have duplicate categories in WooCommerce? I've imported demo content into a new website template and it seems to have duplicated the categories. Products are not duplicated.

Is there anywhere in the database, etc that I could edit to stop this?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by simplixi
Member Avatar for simplixi

As a rule of thumb for anyone developing a WordPress/WooCommerce website, avoid buying a theme and importing the demo directly into a production site. Doing so can cause more harm than good. The demo content is intended for development or testing purposes only, not for a production website.

Now having duplicate categories in WooCommerce after importing demo content as this is a common issue that's why you shouldn't do that on your production website. It usually happens due to the import process creating new categories instead of matching with existing ones. Some steps you can take to resolve this:

Check for Duplicate Categories:

  • Go to Products > Categories in your WordPress dashboard
  • Look for categories with the same name and decide which ones you want to keep

Merge or Delete Duplicate Categories:

  • You can manually delete duplicate categories from the list by selecting them and choosing "Delete" from the bulk actions dropdown
  • If you wish to merge categories, you'll need a plugin like "Term Management Tools" which allows you to merge terms

Check the Database:

  • Access your database via phpMyAdmin or another database management tool
  • Look at the wp_terms and wp_term_taxonomy tables. These tables store category names and their taxonomy relationships

Edit the Database Manually:

  • If you are comfortable with SQL, you can manually delete duplicate entries from these tables. Be cautious with this approach, as it can affect your website if not done correctly

Use a Plugin:

  • Consider using a plugin like "WooCommerce Duplicate Category Remover" to automate the process of finding and merging duplicate categories

Review Import Settings

  • If you plan to import demo content again, check the import settings to see if there's an option to prevent duplicates or match existing categories

Hopefully this will help.

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