WordPress is an awesome tool to manage a podcast, a blog, or I’ve even used it as a comprehensive CMS (Content Management Solution) However some of the small little details often go unnoticed when your trying to make the content speak for itself.
Permalinks are the URL that permanently links to your content. So that long after the article is off the front page you can still get directly there. This is a good thing. The bad thing is that WordPress by default has permalinks that look like this. https://www.caffination.com/?p=641. This is all well and good for those of you out there who speak machine code, but as a friendly and informative way of knowing what the content of the article this method sucks.
Lucky for you you can change the way WordPress manages its’ permalink structure. Unluckily for you if your blog is several years old like this one was, then as soon as you modify the structure to something more like this https://www.caffination.com/tech/know-to-wordpress-tweaking-641/ anyone linking to the old link is lost. The good thing about the new schema is that a human can get a good idea as to the content of the article without clicking on it. This is invaluable.
Enter Dean’s Permalink Migration Plugin. This is the easiest way to change your permalinks that not only is Human friendly, but much more friendly to the Search Engines. Design what type of link works best for you. WordPress Permalink SEO is a fine art and deserves some thought before you just drop any old information in there.
The only problem with Dean’s plugin is that the instructions don’t give a very good step by step. I have been asked on numerous occasions to provide that information for friends so I thought I would share the wealth. This worked on wordpress 2.1 – my current setup on wordpress 2.5 with podpress 8.8 and the episodes are still intact, and available.
- Leave Old permalink structure intact on WP blog
- Upload, activate and set plug-in to match old permalink structure.
- Then and only then change your PL structure to the new and improved.
My show went from /archives/%post_id% to /%category%/%postname%-%post_id%/ in plain English the URL for this episode would have looked like this, https://www.caffination.com/archives/641, on the old schema. And with the new deal it looks like this. https://www.caffination.com/tech/know-to-wordpress-tweaking-641/
All is right with the world now. Be careful with where you put your /’s Originally i messed this up and my blog was out of commission for a good 4 or 5 hours before i figured out what went wrong. My original setting was /archives/%post_id%/ instead of /archives/%post_id% makes a world of difference. Not the lack of the trailing /
Details people, Details…