Comments on: And we’re back. Sort of.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 01:07:35 +0000

Thanks so much for posting this. I’m just trying to figure out my permalink structure before starting my blog. It’s driving my crazy. It seems that SEO is directly at odds with this issue. I don’t want dates in my URLs at it will ‘date’ my posts (who’d have thought?). So, starting with a post id seems sensible I think. A compromise, but thanks to your post, I see it’s worth making.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 02:03:28 +0000

I am very pleased to say I have answered my own question. Why this doesn’t appear as a default in WordPress amazes me.

After reading about some examples, I tried: /%page_id%/%pagename% and voila! Fast and pretty!

For those who haven’t, paste the following into your .htaccess file first:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:46:00 +0000

Hey Steve, I’m thankful you’ve gone to the trouble of sharing your findings. I’m new to this though, and can’t quite understand what you meant in Update 4.

I am using a “Pages Only” setup, just using “/%pagename%/

You said “If you’re using a WordPress CMS setup using ‘pages’ only, DO NOT set up your permalink structure as “%category%/%post_name%” even if you’re not going to publish a blog portion. Pick anything else. You don’t need the pretty link setups (pages do that by default).

What exactly do you mean by “Pick anything else”?

Also, my pages dont do ‘pretty links’ by default – they appear live as (eg.) /?page_id=19

Any further explanation would be very much appreciated.

Cheers, Michael.

By: Steve Douglas

Steve Douglas — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 22:38:08 +0000

Hey Dan – I suppose you had similar issues, huh? I feel your pain, but hopefully, all’s well now.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:51:08 +0000

Man I wish I would have found you about 30 hours of work ago!!!!