Don’t keep changing your permalinks
I’m running into some annoying issues. I ran the default(ugly) permalinks on my blog when i started this blog. This was cause i had no clue what permalinks were. After i learned that i should change it, i did. Then i changed it again. Now i have to update my feedburner and other posts cause some my older links are showing up as “Error 404 - Not Found”
Permalinks are links to the permanent URL address of each post and page on your blog. The default doesn’t describe your title, just a bunch of numbered code. When you chose the custom option, you’re post title will show with date etc. This helps to get it indexed and looks much better. If you’re individual post still looks like, “domain.dom/p?23″ you should check it right away. Just go to options and permalinks in wordpress admin. It’s a dead giveaway that you’re a noob.
ASIDE: I should customize my 404 error page as well. When i do this i will write a short tutorial on how to do this. Customizing 404 helps indexing and can make people want to stay on the site. The default looks ugly and makes people want to leave your blog.
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December 3rd, 2007 at 11:04 pm
yeah i had problems with the permalinks also. it was a pretty annoying mess
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:52 pm
You’re probably best to put a 301 re-direct in your .htaccess file. It really isn’t that hard to do, especially for us noobs.
December 4th, 2007 at 1:50 am
I had the same problem Noob. I found a sweet plugin - check it out:
http://therookieblogger.com/permalinks-naughty-or-nice/
December 4th, 2007 at 4:00 pm
Guess what Noob? I have that book about Wordpress (ya know, the one that won’t teach me anything) and it told me to set up the “pretty” premalinks, and that is one of the first things I did.
My Wordpress site is coming along, I am hoping to roll it out here in the next 30 days,
AL
December 6th, 2007 at 8:16 am
thewild1-yeah…at least it’s a lesson learned.
nick-if u fiddle with .htaccess you’re blogging skillz are far better then mine
rookie- nice plugin. thanks for bringing to my attention.
allyn-hmmm…maybe i should write another post about how useful wordpress books are…nah…still think learning via trail and error is the best way.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Yes, I encountered the permalink issue early on and fortunately found out about it in time to get it changed after my fourth day of blogging, so I didn’t have to worry too much about getting rid of the ugly default links. For the links that still existed at the time I made the permalink change, I was able to remove these URLs from the search results in Google through the Webmaster Tools and get them replaced with the optimized ones fairly quickly.
Making the change was relatively easy; I went to Options >> Permalinks from the admin panel and selected the second option, “name and date based” for the new permalink structure. This is much more logical and SEO friendly, plus I can still modify the URL somewhat by editing the “post slug” in WordPress before publishing. This is sometimes helpful in further targeting keywords for SEO and eliminating unnecessary words from URL in the case of longer post titles.
Frankly, I cannot figure out why WordPress still uses those ugly PHP links as the default when it seems like they could easily make the name and date based format the default permalink structure instead, thus saving newbies a lot of time and headaches in optimizing their blogs for readers and search engines.
May 25th, 2008 at 2:12 am
[…] Newbies. I keep getting emails about this issue. Some of you don’t know what permalinks are. Permalinks are the “permanent links” of the posts that you write for you blog. The […]