Changing Permalinks

Apr 25

Oh boy that was sweet. Okay let me qualify that by saying that I enjoy when things are easy and efficient. If you feel differently, then you may very well disagree with me.

So on a nice lazy morning I decided to look into converting my permalink structure to one that I preferred. Permalinks are how Wordpress describes permanent links to a post. When I first started this blog a couple of years ago (seriously, that long??) I decided on going with a fairly standard /yyyy/mm/dd/post-name type of structure for my posts. However, I am now a little opposed to this since it reveals more information than I would like. I tend to think that my writing transcends time since I am not usually writing about current events so I want to remove a visitor’s perception that my post is not worth reading just because it is old.

After searching online, I came upon Scott Yang’s Permalink Redirect plugin. The instructions seemed easy enough so I:

1. Downloaded it

2. Unzipped, installed, and activated it

3. Accessed the new Settings->Permalink Redirect page. Under “Old Permalink Structure” clicked the link after “Current permalink structure”

4. Accessed Settings->Permalinks. Changed to a /post-id/post-name structure. (I used tags that I found here.)

All of my old links are now redirecting correctly! And that, my friends and enemies, is sweet! Especially since it took less time than it has taken me to write this post. I’m loving Wordpress all over again for its abilities, both built-in and extensible.