How to Set Up Permalinks: WordPress Tip #2
14 Sep, 2007 | Written by Fred | under WordPress Tps
One of the first thing that you should do when setting up a new blog on WordPress is to turn on permalinks. I do this before I post any articles, because I want all of my posts that are linked around the Internet to point back to the proper permalink. To set up permalinks, follow the following steps:
First: Go to your administration panel > options > permalinks
Second: Decide which version of permalinks your would like. WordPress has four options for permalinks.
- Default – This option is the standard permalink structure. Your posts will look like this, http://yourblog.com/?p=133. I do not like this option because it tells your readers nothing about the topic of your post. It solely tells them that this is the 133rd page on your site.
- Date and Named Based – This option is much better than the default because it tells your reader more information about this url. Your posts will look like this, http://yourblog.com/2009/09/13/post-title/. This is much better than the default, but I see no reason to display the date of the post.
- Numeric – This option is almost the same as the Default option. Your posts will look like this, http://yourblog.com/archive/133. Again, this only tell your readers that this is the 133rd page on your blog. Why would you readers care about this? They couldn’t care less.
- Custom – This is my favorite option. I like for my urls to look like this, http://newestonthenet.com/my-first-guest-blogging-gig/. Readers of Newest on the Net can immediately determine what this post is about. The title of this post is, My First Guest Blogging Gig. I believe that this is all my readers really care about. Besides being good for readers it is good for search engine optimization because my article keywords can be incorporated into my url.
Third: Once you decide that you want to use a customer permalink you need to type in the code for this custom permalink. I use the following code code – /%postname%/.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask by leaving a comment.
tracey | September 14th, 2007 at 5:57 am #
I didn’t know you can do that.
my blog is 2 months old..i post daily..is it 2 late to change now…
will change be automatic ,???
fred | September 14th, 2007 at 10:14 am #
Tracey,
It really depends on how many backlinks you already have. I you don’t mind losing some of those then do it now. The sooner the better. However, it is not the end of the world if you don’t change them. But if you can, I would.
How to Set Up Permalinks On WordPress - Bloggeries Blog Forum | September 14th, 2007 at 10:24 am #
[...] you are interested in setting up permalinks on a self-hosted WordPress blog, I have written a new pictorial article describing the process and the options. If you have not set up permalinks on your blog, I highly [...]
Jay | September 14th, 2007 at 11:13 am #
Another “first thing” task is to figure out what categories you want to use. I ended up changing my category list after a month of daily posting, and it was a pain to go back and edit every post, plus losing any category backlinks I’d accumulated.
Definitely do permalinks and categories as soon as humanly possible when you start a blog.
fred | September 14th, 2007 at 11:27 am #
That is a great tip Jay. I can’t say that I have been too good about this. However, you might have gotten me back on track.
Thanks
pelf | September 16th, 2007 at 12:10 pm #
Well, I personally think that we do not have to settle down with specific categories because the categories can easily be changed. Moreover, we may want to re-arrange our categories from time to time according to the needs of the blog.
For example, you may find yourself posting more on certain topics (e.g. WordPress-related) and you may want to break it down to more specific categories, e.g. WordPress tips and WordPress plugins.
Jay | September 17th, 2007 at 2:21 am #
Well, in my blog I wanted to stick with one category per post for SEO purposes. I also wanted to stay with a relatively small number of categories. So picking a set of categories that worked for my niche and sticking with them was pretty important for me. I’d tried it the other way, and quickly found the list of categories getting out of hand.
If you’re using multiple categories per post, and don’t care much about the number of categories you use, then it isn’t as much of an issue.
James Mann | September 19th, 2007 at 11:16 am #
In my humble opinion changing your PermaLinks is vital to a well optimized blog but to make a change like that could mess things up while the search engines re-index your pages.
I found a WordPress plugin that will help with permalink migrations:
http://www.deanlee.cn/wordpress/permalinks-migration-plugin/
When I made the change in my permalinks I had almost 100 posts and didn’t want to mess things up so I was motivated to find something that would help.
I hope this helps.