odd characters in slug url

  • kendriver

    (@kendriver)


    4 years ago

    My last 6 posts between 13 and 30 April all have /%EF%BF%BC added before the post name in the slug url, so that the correct url – eg. /alice-sinclair-memorial-writing-competition-2022/ returns a ‘page not found’ error. How can I fix this please?

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Rene Hermenau

    (@renehermi)

    4 years ago

    Did you create the post titles by copy and paste them from another text editor like Office360, libre office?

    Are there any “invisible” empty characters in front of the post title?

    These are special characters that were not removed by WordPress and they likely landed in place by using copy and paste or your cat jumped on the keyboard while you were not looking at;-)

    You can click on EDIT and then remove the special characters from the permalink like this: https://monosnap.com/file/zC9e4gVzDVG2ivmpmmq4iNc7ZhGpru

    Btw. It could be a bug that you’ve found. Usually, WordPress should strip such characters from the permalink automatically.

    Could you create a staging site and let me have a look at the post links to verify if this is a bug we need to fix in WordPress?

    You can reach me directly at https://wp-staging.com/support/. Please refer to my name and this forum post when you contact me.

    —————–

    Disclaimer: I am the author of the WordPress plugin WP STAGING, a tool for WordPress backup and cloning. When I offer you to personally contact me it means it comes without any obligation to you or to me. Your data will not be processed for other reasons than helping you with your issue.

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    Thread Starter kendriver

    (@kendriver)

    4 years ago

    Thanks Renee for your quick response. Yes, I did copy/paste post titles and body text from MS Word, as I always have. Difference now is, it was about that time that I upgraded my system to macOS 12 Monterey, and Office 365 to the latest version. I cannot see the special characters in a plain text editor. Re-typing the slug in Quick Edit view does seem to have fixed that URL, but I don’t want to have to do that with every new post if I can avoid it.
    There is a staging site https://fawnsw.org.au/staging/writing-competitions/. Although not completely up to date, it does include my recent posts. I have sent the login details to you at wp-staging.
    Thank you for your assistance.

    Rene Hermenau

    (@renehermi)

    4 years ago

    Hi Ken,

    so for other user with a similar issue:​
    ​
    The best and cleanest way to get the content from a text processor like Office into an website and HTML document is either:
    ​
    ​- Write articles directly in the WordPress editor and use the DRAFT mode to ensure not to release an article until it is accomplished.
    ​
    ​Or
    ​
    ​- Copy the content from the Office document beforehand into a raw text editor like notepad to ensure that all invisible formatting characters are removed.
    ​- Only after then copy the content into the WordPress editor

    You can always switch to the HTML view in the WordPress editor to see if the text is clean as expected.
    ​
    > I cannot see the special characters in a plain text editor.

    Even a plain text editor does not show you invisible text characters as default. But better editors like notepad++ allow you to activate a mode where they show you all bytes of a document including linefeed characters and so on, but this needs to be activated manually.

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

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