Category link redirect to custom template page instead of index.php?

Your question implies that index.php is a page to be redirected to, it isn’t, it’s purely a template file. It implies that single.php being loaded is what makes a page singular, or that loading the page.php template will give you a page, when it’s actually the other way around.

I strongly recommend reading about the template hierarchy, it should answer your question, and make a few things about WordPress chooses a template file to load in your theme make a lot more sense.

Specifically WordPress:

  • Uses rewrite rules to match the URL to a set of query variables to pass into a database query
  • Passes those through the pre_get_posts filter then makes the query to grab posts
  • Uses those query variables to choose a template

E.g. if the s query var is present, then is_search() will return true, and WordPress will look for a search.php theme template to load. If it doesn’t exist, it loads the fallback, archive.php, and if that doesn’t exist it loads the final fallback index.php.

In your custom taxonomy case it will load these files in this order until it finds one:

  • taxonomy-$taxonomy-$term.php
  • taxonomy-$taxonomy.php
  • taxonomy.php
  • archive.php
  • if paged=true: paged.php
  • index.php

Were $taxonomy is the internal name of your taxonomy ( as used in register_taxonomy ), and $term is the ID of the taxonomy term.

Further Reading

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