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General Settings

Strip the category base, redirect attachment pages, set external link behaviour, fill in missing image alt and title attributes, and add a line to every post in your RSS feeds.

7 min read
On this page
  1. Permalinks: Strip Category Base
  2. When a category keeps /category/
  3. Requirements
  4. Permalinks: Redirect Attachment Pages
  5. Links
  6. Images
  7. Add Missing ALT Attributes
  8. Also Fill Empty Alt
  9. Add Missing TITLE Attributes
  10. Generate Alt Text with AI on Upload
  11. RSS Feed
  12. Crawl cleanup
  13. FAQ
  14. Will stripping the category base break links people already have?
  15. Why does one of my categories still have /category/ in its URL?
  16. Does Add Missing ALT Attributes change the alt text saved in my Media Library?
  17. Does Add Missing ALT Attributes use AI or credits?
  18. Related reading

The General screen holds the site-wide switches that change your URLs, your links and your images rather than any one page's metadata. It has five sections: Permalinks (strip the category base, redirect attachment pages), Links (nofollow and new-tab behaviour for external links, and the internal link counter), Images (fill in missing alt and title attributes, and optionally generate alt text with AI when images are uploaded), RSS Feed (a line before or after each post in your feeds) and Crawl cleanup (optional switches that remove tags, headers and feeds WordPress adds by default).

Open it from Hydrogen SEO → General in wp-admin (in the Settings group of the sidebar). Changes save automatically a couple of seconds after you make them, and the Save button in the top bar saves them straight away.

General settings page: Permalinks (1), Links (2) and Images (3) cards.

WordPress puts /category/ in front of every category address. Strip Category Base removes it:

BeforeAfter
yoursite.com/category/news/yoursite.com/news/
yoursite.com/category/news/local/yoursite.com/news/local/
Category link after Strip Category Base: /brewing-guides/.

With the switch on:

  • Every category link uses the new address: menus, the XML sitemap, canonical URLs, breadcrumbs, and anywhere else WordPress prints a category link.
  • Child categories keep their hierarchy, as /parent/child/.
  • Feeds, pagination and embeds keep working on the new addresses, for example /news/feed/ and /news/page/2/.
  • Old addresses redirect. A request for /category/news/ gets a 301 redirect to /news/, with any query string kept, so existing links and search results carry over.

When a category keeps /category/

If a published page already uses a category's new address, that category keeps /category/ so the page still loads. For example, a page at /news/ means the News category stays at /category/news/. With the /%postname%/ permalink structure, the same applies to posts: a post at /news/ also keeps the category at /category/news/. Rename the page, post or category slug if you want the short address.

Requirements

Strip Category Base needs pretty permalinks. If Settings → Permalinks is set to Plain (?p=123), there is no category base to remove.

If you import from Yoast SEO, Rank Math, All in One SEO, SEOPress or Slim SEO, their strip-category-base setting is imported into this switch; see switch from another SEO plugin.

Every upload has a page of its own, with one image or file and almost no text: sites set up before WordPress 6.4 show these pages, and newer sites send them to the file. Redirect Attachment Pages (version 0.0.28 and later, off by default) sends those pages with a 301 redirect to the published post the file was uploaded to, or to the file itself when it is not attached to a published, public post without a password. Images and file links inside your posts are not affected, and a redirect you add in the Redirection Manager for a particular attachment address takes priority.

Sites installed with WordPress 6.4 or later already send attachment pages to the file; older sites still show them. The full behaviour, with how to check the result, is in attachment page redirects.

  • Nofollow External Links adds rel="nofollow" to every external link in your content.
  • Open External Links in New Tab/Window adds target="_blank" to external links in your content.
Settings › General › Links: switching on Nofollow External Links and Open External Links in New Tab (saves automatically). Page source after: the outbound link has target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener"; the internal link is unchanged.

Nofollow tells search engines not to pass ranking signals through a link; most sites leave it off and mark individual sponsored or untrusted links instead.

  • Count Internal Links (version 0.0.30 and later, on by default) counts the links in your published content, shows links out and links in for each post on the Posts and Pages screens, and adds an Orphaned filter there. The line under the switch shows how far the count is, and Recount links starts it again. This switch saves by itself as soon as you click it. See the internal link counter.

Images

Add Missing ALT Attributes

Fills in alt text on images that have no alt attribute, as the page is printed. Nothing is saved to the Media Library or to your posts.

Settings › General › Images: Add Missing ALT and Add Missing TITLE attributes, with their format fields.

The alt text used is, in order:

  1. The image's Alternative Text from the Media Library, when set.
  2. Otherwise the Alt Attribute Format. From version 0.0.30 the default is %image_title%, the image's title in the Media Library or its file name as words, and the field accepts %image_title%, %filename%, %post_title% and %site_name%. Type @ to insert one. A format saved earlier with %title% keeps printing the post title, and a format that prints nothing for an image falls back to the default.

Also Fill Empty Alt

WordPress prints an empty alt="" for an image whose Alternative Text was left blank, and the same markup is the correct way to mark a decorative image. From version 0.0.30 this is a separate switch: with it off, images with alt="" are left alone; with it on, they are filled like images with no alt at all, featured and gallery images included. Sites that had Add Missing ALT Attributes on before 0.0.30 keep filling empty alt until this switch is saved.

If your site relies on alt="" to have screen readers skip decorative images, leave it off and write alt text for meaningful images in the Media Library instead. Images marked role="presentation", role="none" or aria-hidden="true" are never given alt text, with either setting.

Add Missing TITLE Attributes

Fills in the title attribute on images that have none or an empty one, using the Title Attribute Format (default %image_title%), with the same four variables.

The variables, examples of good and bad formats and the developer filter are in image SEO: automatic alt and title attributes.

Generate Alt Text with AI on Upload

When this switch is on, each image uploaded without alt text gets alt text written by AI, using 1 credit per image. It applies to images only; PDFs and other files are never sent.

  • It is off by default.
  • It is shown only while the site is connected to Hydrogen AI. If the site is not connected, a Connect link appears in its place; see connect your account.
  • Images uploaded with alt text already filled in are left alone.

Credits are explained in credits, plans and billing. For writing alt text with AI on images already in your library, one at a time or in bulk, see image alt text.

RSS Feed

The RSS Feed section (version 0.0.29 and later) has two fields, Before each post and After each post. Whatever you type is added as its own paragraph above or below every post in your RSS and Atom feeds, in the full text and in the summary. Both are empty by default, and an empty field adds nothing.

Besides the usual template variables, three variables print links: %post_link% (the post title, linked to the post), %site_link% (the site name, linked to the homepage) and %author_link% (the author's name, linked to their author page). A typical line is The post %post_link% appeared first on %site_link%., so that a site which republishes your feed automatically carries a link back to the original. Preview in a feed reader, beside the fields, shows the result on a sample post. Comment feeds are not changed.

The full reference, with examples and how to check your feed, is in RSS feed text.

Crawl cleanup

The Crawl cleanup section (version 0.0.31 and later) has fourteen switches in four groups: Head tags, Feeds, Feeds: turn off and redirect and Headers. They remove things WordPress adds to every site, such as shortlinks, REST API and RSD links, oEmbed discovery links, the generator tag, the emoji script, extra feed links and the pingback header, and can redirect comment and search feeds to the page they belong to. All of them are off by default, so nothing changes until you turn one on, and your main feed is never touched.

What each switch removes, and when to leave it off, is in crawl cleanup.

FAQ

No. Old /category/... addresses 301-redirect to the new ones, query string included, and every link the site prints switches to the new address.

Why does one of my categories still have /category/ in its URL?

A published page (or, with the /%postname%/ structure, a post) already uses that category's new address, so the category keeps /category/ to avoid taking the page's URL. Change one of the two slugs to free the address.

Does Add Missing ALT Attributes change the alt text saved in my Media Library?

No. It fills the attribute in the page's HTML when the image is printed. The Media Library alt text is untouched, and when it is set, it is what gets used.

Does Add Missing ALT Attributes use AI or credits?

No. It uses the Media Library alt text or the Alt Attribute Format, and works with no account. Only Generate Alt Text with AI on Upload uses AI and credits.

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