Page permalink changed, I don't know why, and I can't change it back

  • Resolved LRSTSM

    (@lrstsm)


    9 years, 9 months ago

    I have a site with mainly PAGES.
    For example https://www.cysafetyproducts.com/w-hw/

    I used to have a page https://www.cysafetyproducts.com/w-dw/ that looked similar to the above (image, product description, shopping cart info) … But recently I edited /w-dw/ and somehow, in the process, its permalink changed to https://www.cysafetyproducts.com/w-dw-2/

    I did not make this change myself (at least not on purpose! I didn’t edit the permalink. I added some text and may have changed something about the photo.

    The original permalink /w-dw/ is now a page with just the photo.

    I have tried opening the page /w-dw-2/ and editing the permalink, but it will not let me change it back to /w-dw/
    I also tried using QuickEdit to change the Slug, hit update… that change was also not accepted.

    I suppose this is because there now exists another page by that name (just the image) but I can’t find that in “all pages” so I can’t delete it.

    I would really like the page /w-dw/ to be the product page, because there are many links to it and it’s been indexed.

    How can I get my page back to the original setting, where the page that’s now called /w-dw-2/ goes back to being called /w-dw/ ?

    (I did not create the site but am now responsible for maintaining it. I don’t fully understand wordpress but am learning. Thank you for any help.)

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)

  • If you have MySQL skills, you could find the offending entry with the slug you want and rename the slug.

    But this sounds like a better way:
    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/no-slug-conflicts-with-trash/

    There may be other plugins that do this, too, so feel free to look around.

    Thread Starter LRSTSM

    (@lrstsm)

    No MySQL skills I’m afraid.
    The plugin looks promising but I don’t have any pages in the Trash. The top of the Pages window says “All (38) | Published (37) | Draft (1)”

    …the plugin tries its best to restore untrashed posts to their original slug. The only time it fails to do so is if a new page or post has claimed the trashed post’s original slug, in which case the untrashed post is assigned a new slug.

    I believe that I have the situation where a new page or post has claimed the original slug – right?

    But why can’t I see that new page in my list of “All Pages?”

    Though not recently, I’ve seen deleted, not Trash, Pages that still would make the Slug unavailable for a new Page. At the time, I actually did the MySQL work to find and delete the database table rows involved.

    As I say, time to experiment with some plugins, starting with the one I mentioned, despite what its documentation says.

    Thread Starter LRSTSM

    (@lrstsm)

    OK, I fixed it.
    I finally realized that, logged in to WP, I could navigate to that new strange page that hijacked my slug, and click edit to open the page for editing, and finally have a way to delete it even though it was not in my list of pages.
    Its permalink was /?attachment_id=520 … so I have no idea where it came from or why /w-dw/ redirected there.
    Anyway, I clicked “delete permanently” to get rid of that attachment page, and was then able to rename /w-dw-2/ back to /w-dw/
    Thanks for your suggestions.

    Good to know for me, too. Last time I ran into this problem, even Delete Permanently did not solve the problem. Though it did resolve itself in a number of days, a month at most.

    Great that you got it working!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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