Extra hyphen and number on post URLs

I’m not sure, but I think WordPress is adding the number of comments on the posts to the end of the URL.

The thing is, I don’t want it there. How do I stop WP from adding the number of comments to the end of my URLs?

FishDogFish,

If I’m not mistaken this number represents a second post by the same name. For example: a post named “myAwesomePost” cannot exist twice. WordPress therefore would append the name of a second post by the same name like “myAwesomePost-2” and so on. This is the case even if you have trashed that inital “myAwesomePost” post.

All posts need unique names.

How do I get rid of the reference to the trashed post?

Is it a backup version that’s on my server, or is it an internal reference set by wordpress?

From Edit Post select “Trash” from the in-page navigation. You can permenantly delete the old posts there. Once you’ve done that head back and edit the post that has -2 in the url and click “edit” next to the permalink to remove the bit that you don’t want. Save and the Update.

I don’t think deleting from the Edit Post will delete the posts from the database.

The only way I found to delete them permanently so you will not get the added numbers is to delete them from the database directly.

You will find all the posts plus a number of revisions that can be deleted.

Michael

It is worth a shot. I’m using 2.9.2 and permenantly deleting them from the trash let me change a URL to one that was previously taken. This is from the list of trashed items, not the post editing screen.

@nathan12343

Deleting the trashed posts from trash, and editing the URLs worked.

Thanks