How To Switch Your Post’s Permalink Structure in WordPress

Posted by Kyle Eslick on July 22nd, 2007 | Category and Tags

Yesterday I wrote a post entitled Site Optimization Tips from Google Search’s Matt Cutts, where I talked about Matt’s recommendation to avoid using dates in your posts URL’s. In that post, I explained how to adjust your permalink structure to remove the dates. Some concerns where then expressed in the comments about making the switch to a permalink URL and the possibility of broken links. This is a legitimate concern for those that rely on old inbound links and search engines for their incoming traffic, so I decided to provide the solution in a new post.

One of the great things about using WordPress is it always seems that the solution is only a plugin away. In this case, the 301 Permalink Redirect plugin should already be installed for the SEO benefits it provides, including merging your www and non-www posts to avoid having duplicate content. What people often forget is it can be used for other purposes as well, including making it easy to redirect your old permalink structure to a new one.

Assuming you have the plugin installed, you’ll want to go into the Options section and find Permalink Redirect. Towards the bottom you will see a section that looks like this:

You can see where it says Old Permalink Structure I put the old structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

That’s all you have to do to redirect everything from your old permalink structure to a new one. Any questions? Post them below and I’ll do my best to answer them!

Want automatic updates? Subscribe to our RSS feed or Get E-mailed Updates! |

There Are No Responses Yet. »

Comment by Mark on July 22nd, 2007:

So this means that once you use this plugin, you always have to use it if only to take care of previous posts, right? One would have to change their structure for future posts, but use this plugin for previous posts, if I understand correctly.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on July 22nd, 2007:

Mark - If you deactivated the plugin, you would indeed lose the 301 redirect that you set up. The thing is, this plugin should always be activated anyway (even if you aren’t using it for the above purpose) to avoid having your search engines index your www and non-www addresses as separate and duplicate posts.

Going into the Permalink section of WordPress, you can see how to easily make the change. This will change all of your posts including older posts and future posts to the new permalink structure of choice. The redirect only forwards people that visit the old address to the permalink you’ve established (such as old incoming links and search engine indexed pages).

Hopefully that makes sense
Comment by Mark on July 22nd, 2007:

Got it! Thanks, Kyle.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on July 24th, 2007:

Sweet! Sometimes when typing a long paragraph, you know what you want to say, but you aren’t sure it translated to type as you meant it to.

Let me know if you have any other questions and I’ll do my best to help!
Comment by jaren on July 25th, 2007:

sweet…thanks for the info… now i can finally change my permalinks with ease.. without freaking hassles… hehehe.. thanks again…
Comment by Kyle Eslick on July 25th, 2007:

No problem Jaren. Glad you found it useful!
Comment by ReviewSaurus on August 20th, 2007:

Hey Kyle,

I tried to change the permalink structure using this but it seems to be not working properly.

My current permalink structure is : /%year%/%monthnum%/Úy%/%postname%/

and i wanted to change it to : /Êtegory%/%postname%/

However, when I put the second i.e. the new structure in the permalink under options and the old structure in the Plugins option, then it just doesn’t redirect properly :(.
Comment by Kyle Eslick on August 20th, 2007:

Review - You are trying to replace the year and month with the category? First, I would make sure you are using the most current version of the plugin (should be using 0.8.1). I had a few redirect problems until I upgraded to the most current version.

If you are using the most current version of the plugin, then it should place the most current permalink structure in automatically to read

/% category%/%postname%/

(remove the space) meaning all you would have to do is paste the old permalink structure into the plugin.