Why, When and How to Update Your WordPress Permalinks

Sometimes I think that people meet me at a conference, learn that I run a consulting and coaching company for bloggers and small business owners (Make Media Over) or just see that I’ve been blogging for years and assume that I know everything there is to know about the wild world of WordPress.

NOPE.

I can’t tell you how many things I’ve broken (ahem, white screen of death after a bad line of code), cried over (ahem, hackers who deleted my sites) or just plain screwed up. Frankly, I just don’t like to fail at things and when a blog tries to beat me, I fight back.

I share that because you should know that when I recommend tools, tips or other website tweaks, I do so after trying them on my own sandbox.

And that’s why I recommend CONSIDERING making a change to your permalink structure.

Before I go on, a few bullet points:

• CONSIDER is in all caps because this strategy is neither required nor appropriate for all bloggers. You may have an excellent reason for keeping a specific permalink structure, and this is not a blanket “best practice” suggestion.
• Before you make any changes to your site, please save us both the heartache of broken links and:
  • a) back up your site
  • b) be prepared to redirect your existing links to the new structure, so that you don’t break any existing links that have been shared or saved in search engine results, social media, newsletters, etc.

{Despite that warning, and despite the BIG RED FONT in my Make Your Old Content New Again ebook, I know that some of you will try to make the change, not properly redirect and then panic. If you edit your structure and your links don’t work, or the redirection code does not work, just go back to your settings and put your permalinks back to the original structure. That will allow you to have your website work while you figure out what went wrong.}

OK, let’s get to the good stuff.

WordPress Permalinks

The permalink structure is, essentially, what comes after your domain name. Depending on how you set up your WordPress installation from day one, you may have the default setting or Day and name format.

Again, you may have a great reason for keeping dates in your permalinks — especially if you blog about current events, or you post about the same content over and over, the Post name structure may not make as much sense. Consider, then decide whether this is an appropriate strategy for you. Please do keep in mind that even if you change the permalink structure, you can still keep the post dates in the post meta that appears below your title, at the bottom of posts, etc…that is a totally separate edit!

If, like me, you post a lot of evergreen content…and if, like me, you want to share posts that you may have posted months or even years before…and if, like me, you sometimes find yourself not clicking through posts that are shared on social media when you see they are old even though you know that recipes aren’t dated and workouts don’t expire…

You may want to change to the Post name permalink structure, or another custom structure that removes the dates.

When you change your structure to Post name, there are no dates in the permalinks. It also means that if you choose to republish content — see my book for more information if that seems crazy to you — you will not break the original link.

(In fact, I originally wrote a version of this post in 2012 and updated and republished it in 2016!)

So, how can you do this?

It’s fairly easy, if you follow all of the steps.

Use Yoast to Change and Redirect Your Permalinks.

You guys know how much I big puffy heart LOVE Yoast for SEO, right? If not, see this entire category devoted to my favorite plugin.

Yoast has a tool that gives you the redirection code you need to automatically redirect your old structure to your new, so that all of your existing links properly and seamlessly bring visitors to the new version.

But you do need to follow all of the directions. Generate the code at this link and be sure to do steps 5 and 6. Do one without the other and you’ll notice that the links won’t properly redirect.

Quick tip…before you make your change, pick two or three posts from your site and save those links somewhere in a notepad or document. Once you make your change, try loading those old, original links. If they properly go to the new structure, you’re good to go! If not, go back to your original structure, remove the code from your .htaccess file and then start over.

If you don’t see an .htaccess file when you go into your Yoast plugin, you may actually need to create one. It is a bit more advanced but this tutorial from Team Treehouse is really helpful!

So, to review:

WHY and WHEN

If you post evergreen content and want to share some of your older posts on social media and in newsletters, or you want to update and actually republish that content.

HOW

Once you’re backed up and have the directions from Yoast pulled up, generate the redirection code and then paste it into your .htaccess file. Test your original links to be sure they properly load with the new structure. If they work — yay! If they don’t, undo what you did and then figure out what step needs to be tweaked.