Simple, not urgent, permalinks question

  • I’ve searched but haven’t found the answer to this. I converted to permalinks not long ago. I noticed though that some links within the site stayed in the old format. These were: 1) the links in posts to pages on my site, 2)the links in the header wherein the Fasttrack theme gives you icons for “about the author,” “contact the author,” etc.

    The blog is at https://www.smalltownproject.org/

    I went ahead and hand converted the links in posts to permalinks, as well as most of those in the header.

    My question is simply — is it necessary to make these few extra conversions? It won’t hurt anything, will it? :-/

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Huh?

    Ok, if I get this (and I’m not sure I do), you changed the structure of your permalinks and thus hardcoded links got all broken and so thus you fixed them. If that’s what you’re talking about, no that won’t effect anything. In essence you did the breaking when you altered the structure. It happens I did it myself once.

    Thread Starter asecondforever

    (@asecondforever)

    No, actually nothing broke. It’s just that any link within a post to a page on the site (as well as those in the header) remained in the old format (…/?page_id=16) rather than being converted to permalinks. Here’s an example of a page which, when navigated to from the “links” link on the header, still retains the old format:

    https://www.smalltownproject.org/?page_id=16

    You see, it still works, but it’s not a permalink. However, here’s the same page at its permalink location associated with clicking on the title to the page:

    https://www.smalltownproject.org/recommended-links-and-more/

    I can convert the old style link by hand, just wonder if it actually makes any difference. i.e., does it remain useable forever despite the fact that there are other links to that section (the “links” section) which are now in permalink form?

    Ohhh.

    Yeah when you change to permalinks only the links WP generates change. So if you posted a link or have it in your template, it remains. And no you don’t have to change anything – the ID will always work, but the permalink redirect might be nice for you. That way even if someone does use the regular id method to get to a post or page, they’ll be automatically redirected to the permalink. I use it and enforce www preference on my site and it’s a rather spiffy thing.

    It should be noted that the ?page_id=X URIs are permalinks. In fact, they’re the most perma of any kind of link, because they’ll stay the same even if you change your site’s structure. What they are not is “pretty” or “clean” or “nice.” It also brings up the issue of having two links that point to the same resource. The two plugins above will serve you well in forcing the “nice” permalinks that you want people to be using.

    Thread Starter asecondforever

    (@asecondforever)

    Ah, thanks ceo and markjaquith. Very interesting info.

    markjaquith, you almost seem to make a case for staying with the ?page_id… style links rather than going “perm.” Would you actually advise that, or is it generally outweighed by the nice logical look of the “pretty” permalinks?

    The disadvantage of the actual permalink is that it is not search engine friendly. If that doesn’t matter to you, then by all means don’t use the pretty permalinks. But the plugins I linked to will eliminate the issue of having several links pointing to the same place.

    Thread Starter asecondforever

    (@asecondforever)

    Thanks, ceo!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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