For this site, it has a parent category (called Library) and two ‘sub‘ categories attached to it (Reading List and Podcast Series).

The permalinks have been styled as I would like them to be (parent category > category > post (where applicable)…

https://embodied-knowledge.org/library/reading-list/
https://embodied-knowledge.org/library/podcast-series/

I added a period (.) in the category base to prevent the word ‘category’ appearing in the urls.

This all works fine, however whenever the two urls above are refreshed they go back to the landing page rather than reloading the actual page.

The only fix I can find is to remove the period (.) from the category base, as the pages refresh fine when this is done. However as stated, it means the word category appears in the urls which I do not want.

Not sure if this is theme related rather than a WP issue? Any ideas or suggestions of why this might be happening?

Thanks very much!