If I’m reading everything correctly, i assume you ideally want a single post type permalink of this:
This is based on you using a post type slug of products and a taxonomy of product-category
Correct?
If yes, then there’s going to be work needing done outside of the capabilities that CPTUI can handle. The portions of the permalink are what tells WordPress query parsing what each component is.
For example /product-item/basketball-001 is telling WP that basketball-001 is a term from the product-item taxonomy.
I wonder if could help shape your permalinks to more your need. Otherwise, it’d take a fair amount of custom coding to make things work the way I think you’re needing.
Best other idea I have would be the “/basketball/” portion being a parent post in the post type, instead of a product category term, and use the permalink plugin above to remove the post type slug base.
Yes, exactly. The parent post may be also a good idea. OK, I’m going to try permalink manager plugin right now. Thank you very much! : )