Broken permalink

  • Resolved dagnew

    (@dagnew)


    10 years, 4 months ago

    I have permalinks set to “Post name”, but many of my posts have long names which I’ve read can be problematic. My site generally works very well.

    I recently did a search within my site and when I clicked on one of the posts in the list which WordPress returned, I got a ‘page not found’. In admin mode, I searched in ‘all posts’, found the post, and it’s permalink was https://capedownwinders.org/1375/ (which didn’t work). I found that if I put capedownwinders.org/?p=1375 into the browser address field (adding “?p=”), the page displayed. So I edited the permalink changing it to https://capedownwinders.org/?p=1375 but when I clicked ‘OK’, WP changed the permalink to https://capedownwinders.org/p1375/. Still, that fixed it. I’m not sure why that works, but it does. I also don’t know why that post got broken.

    Happy ending, but I don’t know if the problem may affect other posts. If the default permalink setting (?p=1375) is the most robust, I have no problem changing my permalink setting, but I have these questions:

    1. Will changing the permalink setting for my site change the urls for all prior posts and pages?

    2. Will this break the links that are scattered about the web so that they no longer find my posts?

    Thanks in advance for guidance!

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Changing the permalinks should not break links within your site (if the site was put together correctly). WordPress does a pretty good job of handling that for you.

    If I remember correctly, WordPress converts incoming default links to permalinks but not friendly permalinks to default. I could be very wrong here. One way to test this is to simply try it real fast.

    Change your permalinks to default and attempt to visit a page using friendly permalinks. If you are redirected to the correct page, you are good to go.

    Thread Starter dagnew

    (@dagnew)

    Thanks, Justin. I tried it – I simply changed my permalink setting from ‘post name’ to ‘default’. I then refreshed a browser window that had a long, ‘friendly’ post name – it took me to my home page (not the page I’d been viewing).

    So my experiment tells me that changing the permalink setting away from ‘default’ is not to be done lightly, for if one does so, they will have to stay with their choice to ensure that all old links (especially from other sites) will continue to work.

    Thread Starter dagnew

    (@dagnew)

    resolved, I believe

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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