Permalinks

Video Transcript

This class will show you the permalinks settings panel in your settings section. Let’s go ahead and log into our admin area, which I’ve already done here. Over on the left side bar, hover over settings and then click on permalinks. Now, in the hope of keeping this video as simple and short as possible, just know that the permalinks determine how the URL of your pages and post will display in the browser’s address bar.

Now, by default, the permalink is set to plain which displays a question mark and the post or page ID number. For example, like this on this post has the domain name, question mark and then the post ID number. Now, two of the main reasons permalinks even exist are for the URL to be easy to understand by humans and search engines. This plain setting does neither.

Now, any of these other four settings is much better, but the post name setting is the most popular. It makes the URL easier to remember and it’s also shorter than the other settings. Now, you also have this custom structure option which gives you even more flexibility. You have these other variables here that can be used in the permalink structure. Remember to try and keep your URL as short as possible and easy to remember. Don’t go adding all of these. I mean you can and it will work, but remember, keep it short and easy to remember.

For example, if we select post name which is the one that I’m going to go with. Let’s say, you want the category to also be included in your URL and put the cursor where you want that to be displayed. In most cases, it’ll be before the post name and after the domain name. Then, click on the category variable button. Boom, automatic. Or if you want the author in there instead of or along with the category, remember to keep it simple and short, but if you want it that way, hey, it’s your site. Do it however you want.

Then, once you have your structure set the way you want it, come on down here and click on save changes. Again, I’m going to stick with the post name only. Let’s go ahead and save changes here and come on back to our post and refresh. Remember, we’ve got the default plain right here now showing the post title or post name, which is much easier to remember and the search engines are going to love it as well. Let’s come on back to our permalink settings.

Lastly, I want to mention that here under the optional section, this deals with the category and tag archives. Frankly, the default settings, just leaving it as it is, is fine for 99.99% of the folks out there. If you want to read up on how this might benefit you if you wanted to change this, head on over to the Codex page on wordpress.org.

That’s codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks. Don’t forget the underscore and the capitalization. Frankly, this page will cover everything you need to know about permalinks on your WordPress site. If we scroll down here just below the variables, this tells you about the category base and tag base and how this might affect your site’s URL structure if you want to make adjustments.

Again, it works fine just the way that it is.

Just below that, this covers something that might come into play if you assign multiple categories to the same post. WordPress is only going to add one category to the URL if you go that route. If you have your structure to display the category and post name, well it’s only going to show one of those categories that you assign.

They also mention a plug-in here, right here, that’s located in the wordpress.org plug-ins repository that allows you to select yourself which one of those categories you want to be displayed in your URL. Again, it tells you about that right there. If you are one that uses multiple categories on your posts, this is something you might want to be aware of.

That’s going to bring us to the end of this class on the permalink settings. Thanks for checking it out, and you have a great day.