Hi!
There is a fix, but it’s more a workaround than a fix. According to this entry, the removing of /category/ won’t improve your SEO results, that’s why originally it’s not working, because wordpress didn’t want to change the core files to accommodate that change.
The fix you’ll need to do is to copy this code at the end of your functions.php file
add_filter( 'category_rewrite_rules', 'vipx_filter_category_rewrite_rules' );
function vipx_filter_category_rewrite_rules( $rules ) {
$categories = get_categories( array( 'hide_empty' => false ) );
if ( is_array( $categories ) && ! empty( $categories ) ) {
$slugs = array();
foreach ( $categories as $category ) {
if ( is_object( $category ) && ! is_wp_error( $category ) ) {
if ( 0 == $category->category_parent ) {
$slugs[] = $category->slug;
} else {
$slugs[] = trim( get_category_parents( $category->term_id, false, '/', true ), '/' );
}
}
}
if ( ! empty( $slugs ) ) {
$rules = array();
foreach ( $slugs as $slug ) {
$rules[ '(' . $slug . ')/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)?/?$' ] = 'index.php?category_name=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]';
$rules[ '(' . $slug . ')/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$' ] = 'index.php?category_name=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]';
$rules[ '(' . $slug . ')(/page/(\d)+/?)?$' ] = 'index.php?category_name=$matches[1]&paged=$matches[3]';
}
}
}
return $rules;
}
And then you’ll need to flush your permalink settings. The way you do that is by going to Settings > Permalinks, and under Common settings select default and save those settings. Then set the permalinks to custom and add /%category%/%postname%/ in the input field. The category base is still just dot.
Then save those permalink settings and now the pagination should be working.
This is more of a hack than a fix however. If you ask us, we’d leave /categories/ in the link, since it’s not really hurting anyone :)
Hope this helps :)
