Using only /%postname%/ as your permalink structure is not recommended because it can cause a variety of errors. Changing your URLs will affect all posts and it will both break links and hurt your search engine rankings. Using a 301 redirect can help with this though.
According to the gurus the “canonical redirect” rules take care of that and will redirect the requests for the old permalinks to the new ones…
I didn’t check it out but I have seen happy posts about it.
(nevertheless, the only post-name might not be the wisest choice, indeed)
Thank you for the responses…
Any certain reason why that might not be a good idea?
I would also like to know the answer to this one as I have gone for just postname, what is the benefit of having the date etc in the URL ?
Roy
(@gangleri)
That’s all in the Codex:
Using only %postname%
If you use postname as the only element in your permalinks to create a structure such as example.com/post-title, the rewrite rules may make it impossible to access pages such as your stylesheet (which has a similar format) or the /wp-admin/ folder [is this true in WordPress 2.0+ versions?]. It’s best to include some numeric data (e.g. the post ID or date) in the permalink to prevent this from happening. Additionally, WordPress v1.2.x requires the use of a date structure in order for some features, such as the calendar, to function properly. /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ is always a good start.
And I can tell you from experience: not funny! It was a few versions back, but I’m not going to try anymore. id/postname works just fine.
I see, I think, all a bit over my head but when you say post ID, is that what they have done here:
http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/
When you click on a post it goes to say :
http://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/how-to-get-published-on-authority-sites/573/
So is the /573 the Post ID ?
What’s the “code” for post ID %codeid% ?
I am runnning 2.6
Roy
(@gangleri)
I use /%post_id%/%postname%
Did you read the structure tags? You can use something else, like month, date, or something. The advice is to use at least one value in the permalink other than the postname (category/postname works too).
Hi
Thanks, I will use post id I think, from an seo perspective I’m guessing adding date time, month etc will only clutter the URL, I can live with post id.
Thanks
