Wordpress category/permalink question

[baldidiot]

Quick question for you wordpress gurus. I'm revamping an older site of mine that wasn't set up that neatly and want to change the url structure. I use joomla for the majority of our projects and know it inside out, but don't know wordpress quite so well...

For the 'blog' we have the following menu item: http://www.bestbettingsites.org.uk/category/blog/ - is it possible to remove the /category/ so that it's just /blog/

I know I can do this using htaccess but figured there may be a setting or something I can just use.

Also, the permalinks are just set to 'post name' - if we modified this so there were all listed under /blog/ would wordpress automatically 301 the old url's, or is this something we have to do manually?

[wonderpunter]

yes you can create a blog page then go into reading or writing.. cant remember which and set the set blog page for blogs

[DaftDog]

yes you can create a blog page then go into reading or writing.. cant remember which and set the set blog page for blogs

As wonderpunter mentioned go Setting >> Reading where you can set your homepage and blog page.

[universal4]

I don't think that he is asking to repoint the home page/default page.

I am not sure if you can do what you want, but if you have a category named football and you want it to point to /blog/football/ remember that you could not have a page named "football" since that would also be /blog/football/

There is a settings where you can set the category base url, but I do not know if you can easily point that back at the root (or on your case blog/)

That is in the settings root section.

I would be sure to back up the database before changing that just in case it doesn't like the categories pointing at what is considered root.

Rick
Universal4

[wonderpunter]

For blog he can do just do that by setting the blog page.. if he creates blog page called Sports then it would be sports/pageafter but if he wants to do it with multiple pages then hes just needs to use page functions.. but all post functions will go to the set page he created

[DaftDog]

I don't think that he is asking to repoint the home page/default page.

I do realise that, I thought I would just mention that he can set his home page and blog page from there.

[DaftDog]

Also, the permalinks are just set to 'post name' - if we modified this so there were all listed under /blog/ would wordpress automatically 301 the old url's, or is this something we have to do manually?

If you modified your permalink structure all your old posts would take on the new structure. Just remember that WordPress automatically adds all posts to a "blog" page so I don't see why you would want to do that with your permalink settings.

Added:
You've added a category called "Blog" to your navigation which is not the optimal way of doing it. Rather create a page called "Blog" or "News" and then set it in Settings >> Reading as your blog page. Then add that page to your navigation.

[UTG]

I use Yoast SEO on most of my Wordpress-sites. It is easy to remove the category base if you use Yoast. Just go to Yoast settings -> Advanced -> Permalinks and tick the box that says ”Strip the category base (usuallly /category/) from the category URL.”


I’ve been told that you can do that also in the Permalinks-settings in Wordpress if you have /%category%/%postname%/ as a custom structure and then just add a dot as the category base. I haven’t tried that myself though. There are also plugins that removes the category base.

[baldidiot]

yes you can create a blog page then go into reading or writing.. cant remember which and set the set blog page for blogs

Ok cool, did not know that. Tried it and did work but can't seem to get it to show the excerpts though, only the full posts. Tried changing it on the reading settings as well as a setting on the page, but still outputting the full text.

I'm reasonably comfortable with php so can probably just modify this manually though...

If you modified your permalink structure all your old posts would take on the new structure. Just remember that WordPress automatically adds all posts to a "blog" page so I don't see why you would want to do that with your permalink settings.

For consistency really and a better url structure. Currently the posts are just output without any category, so: http://www.bestbettingsites.org.uk/p...february-2016/

If I'm switching to /blog/ for the blog, makes sense for the urls to be /blog/premier-league...

That's what I do on 99% of our other sites, just knew bugger all about wordpress when this was set up.

I use Yoast SEO on most of my Wordpress-sites. It is easy to remove the category base if you use Yoast. Just go to Yoast settings -> Advanced -> Permalinks and tick the box that says ”Strip the category base (usuallly /category/) from the category URL.”

I’ve been told that you can do that also in the Permalinks-settings in Wordpress if you have /%category%/%postname%/ as a custom structure and then just add a dot as the category base. I haven’t tried that myself though. There are also plugins that removes the category base.

Ok cool, cheers. If I can't get it to work through the core settings I'd probably just use htaccess rather than install a plug in but good to know the option is there.

[TravG]

It will redirect all the old pages so you do not need to do that manually.

Maybe I misread this, but is the entire site in wordpress? If so just create a page called "Blog" and then make that page (Blog) as your posts page under the reading settings. Then every post you make will fall under that page.

Then you can even tweak it a little more by changing the permalink structure if you wanted to. I just set mine to post name so it would be xwww.xyz.com/blog/postname/ This way if you wanted categories to show up then it would come after the "Blog" so /blog/category/postname

[baldidiot]

It will redirect all the old pages so you do not need to do that manually.

Ok cool, good to know!

Maybe I misread this, but is the entire site in wordpress? If so just create a page called "Blog" and then make that page (Blog) as your posts page under the reading settings. Then every post you make will fall under that page.

Then you can even tweak it a little more by changing the permalink structure if you wanted to. I just set mine to post name so it would be xwww.xyz.com/blog/postname/ This way if you wanted categories to show up then it would come after the "Blog" so /blog/category/postname

Yes it is (although I'll be honest I wish it wasn't).

It was actually the links I was referring to as well. Does having a static page as the posts page affect the permalinks? Wasn't aware of that but if that is the case then would kill two birds with one stone.

Now I just have to figure out why it wont let me use excepts on the new post page...

[DaftDog]

It will redirect all the old pages so you do not need to do that manually.

Changing the permalink url structure will just change your post url structure. It will not redirect any incoming links to the old url's to the new url's. You could use a plugin called Redirection to assist with that.

[DaftDog]

Now I just have to figure out why it wont let me use excepts on the new post page...

I assume you have already set the "For each article in a feed, show: Summary" on the Settings >> Reading page. If so then it may be a theme setting that needs to be adjusted.

[baldidiot]

I assume you have already set the "For each article in a feed, show: Summary" on the Settings >> Reading page. If so then it may be a theme setting that needs to be adjusted.

Yeah I tried that. There's also a setting on the page itself, which also doesn't work. I'm guessing it's a bug with the theme so I'll have to roll up the sleeves and dig around in the code.

[playmex]

You have to redirect all your missing pages, but you will loose some amount of your organic traffic because of the new reindex of Google.

Its a pain in the ass changing everything but its a good change so you dont loose a lot of your in-page link juice.