WP Manifestindependent plugin directory
manifest / admin / category-tag-trash

Category & Tag Trash

A trash for WordPress categories, tags and custom terms, with undo and full restore.

by Aryan Jasala · github.com/aryanjasala/category-tag-trash · website

★ 0stars

Install

Download source zip No release zip yet

This is the repository archive. It installs, but the folder name will carry the branch suffix and updates will not flow.

Install straight from GitHub with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/aryanjasala/category-tag-trash/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
No built-in updater. New versions won't appear under Dashboard → Updates. Install new releases yourself, or let Git Updater track the repository.
Readme github.com/aryanjasala/category-tag-trash ↗

Category & Tag Trash

Try in WordPress Playground Latest release WordPress 6.6+ PHP 7.4+ License: GPL-2.0-or-later
PHPCS PHPStan Unit tests E2E tests Plugin Check

A trash for WordPress categories, tags and custom terms. Undo a delete in one click, or restore it later with its posts, child terms and menu links.

Category & Tag Trash" width="880">

Posts and pages go to the trash when you delete them. Categories and tags don't: one click and the term is gone, its posts move to Uncategorized, its child categories move up a level and its menu links disappear. Category & Tag Trash keeps every deleted term for 30 days and puts all of that back on restore, under the same ID.

[!NOTE] Free and open source under the GPL. No pro version, no upsells, no ads in wp-admin, no tracking. And it stays that way.

Features

  • Undo right after a delete, on every term screen, for single and bulk deletes
  • Same ID on restore, so navigation blocks, widgets and shortcodes that store the ID work again
  • Everything comes back: term meta, posts (in the same order), child terms and menu links in their menu position
  • Posts that only got Uncategorized because of the delete lose it again
  • Tools > Category & Tag Trash: taxonomy tabs, search, bulk restore and delete, Empty trash, and what each restore brings back
  • Kept for 7, 30, 90 or 365 days, then a daily task deletes them for good
  • Categories, tags, WooCommerce product categories and attributes, and any custom taxonomy with an admin screen

Install

  1. Download category-tag-trash.zip from the latest release.
  2. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin, choose the zip and activate it.

Or with WP-CLI:

wp plugin install https://github.com/aryanjasala/category-tag-trash/releases/latest/download/category-tag-trash.zip --activate

Needs WordPress 6.6+ and PHP 7.4+. To try it first, the Try in WordPress Playground badge opens a throwaway WordPress in your browser with the plugin and some demo content.

Quick look

Everything on the screen is also on WP-CLI:

wp category-tag-trash list --taxonomy=category
wp category-tag-trash restore 42
wp category-tag-trash delete --all

Screenshots

Undo right after deleting a category
Undo right after deleting a category		 Category & Tag Trash">
Tools > Category & Tag Trash
What a restore brings back
What a restore brings back

Documentation

Doc What it covers
Reference Hooks, WP-CLI, the PHP API and what is stored
Development Local setup, commands and tests
Contributing Pull requests, required checks and PR titles
Releasing How merged pull requests become releases
Security Reporting a vulnerability
readme.txt What WordPress.org shows, with the FAQ and changelog

Project structure

category-tag-trash.php           plugin header and PSR-4 autoloader
src/
├── Plugin.php           creates the services
├── Snapshot.php         everything about a term at the moment it was deleted
├── Snapshotter.php      captures terms on pre_delete_term, saves on delete_term
├── Restorer.php         puts a term, its posts, children and menu links back
├── Trash.php            storage (a hidden post type) and queries
├── Purger.php           daily cleanup after the retention period
├── Admin/               trash screen, list table, Undo notices
└── Cli/Command.php      wp category-tag-trash
assets/                  term screen script and styles
tests/
├── Unit/                PHPUnit
└── e2e/                 Playwright specs and the Docker site
.wordpress-org/          screenshots
docs/                    reference, development, contributing, releasing

More free plugins

Small plugins that each fill one gap in WordPress, all free with no pro version:

Plugin What it does
Page Template Usage See which template every page uses, and fix the pages on a missing template
Staging Guard Stops staging copies from emailing real people or getting indexed
Site Read-Only Mode Read-only mode for WordPress during migrations and deploys
Restore Blocks from Revisions Restore a single block from an old revision, not the whole post

License

GPL-2.0-or-later © Aryan Jasala