Can't get rid of Old Permalink

  • Ok, I was working on SEO and I changed the title of a post from “Pacific Loft 399” to “Pacific Loft 399 – Park Model”. I deleted the permalink and updated the post. All went well. Worked perfectly. The problem came when I decided to change back to “Pacific Loft 399”. I changed the name back, d”eleted the permalink again and Updated again. Looking at the page it looks like it worked. But when I go to the page I get a “file not found” (says it has a redirect loop) error. When I look at the URL, it is still “pacific-loft-399-park-model” not “pacific-loft-399” like it says on the edited page. Soooo…. I deleted the page and cleared the trash. I recreated the page as “Pacific Loft 399” with the permalink “pacific-loft-399”. But, when I try to go to the page, I get the same error and the URL is back to “pacific-loft-399-park-model”.

    So I decided to take drastic measures and go to the database. I ended up in deleting all posts with the tile “Pacific Loft…” I then went back and created a new page “Pacific Loft 399” and, guess what, when I went to the page the URL was still “pacific-loft-399-park-model”.

    There’s something seriously wrong with WordPress where it won’t allow us to change the name of a post or change the permalink.

    Does anyone know of a plugin that will clean up the “posts” table in the database. When I created the new post, after deleting all the posts that were in the database, the database now has five entries with the same title.

    Finally, does anyone know how to solve this problem?

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  • This is a pain in the neck problem with wordpress. Effectively, you setup link1, then setup link2. In the background, WordPress redirected link1 to link2.
    Now you’ve changed it back to link1 – so link2 redirects to link1, which redirects to link2… And so on.

    A couple of options, which may not work but you can try:

    1. Permanently delete the page and then re create it (I’m not sure if deleting also deletes postmeta history or not)

    2. Install Redirection plugin – you might be able to edit existing redirects

    Thread Starter katiebegood

    (@katiebegood)

    Ok, I apologize to WordPress for dissing it regarding this problem. It turns out the problem was with Yoast’s WordPress SEO Premium plugin. I got smart and did a database search for “pacific-loft-399-park-model”. Low and behold, there was one entry in the “Options” table referencing a “wp-seo redirect”. I deleted that entry in the options table and the problem was gone.

    I then went to my developers test database and re-created the error. I first attempted to do it with Yoast’s free SEO plugin, but I had could changing the name and permalink for a post back and forth with no problems. BUT, once I installed Yoast’s premium plugin and activated it, the same problem occurred. It went away when I deactivated the plugin (the URL was correct). But was back again as soon as I reactivated the plugin. I assume it’s because the plugin made an entry in the database that is there forever unless you delete it in the database. So, if you have Yoast’s WordPress SEO Premium plugin installed, make sure you deactivate it when you make a change to a permalink in a post or page.

    I am going to write to Yoast and let them know about this problem.

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