WordPress Plugin: Permalinks Migration
ADVERTISEMENTSPermalinks Migration is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to safely change your permalink structure without breaking the old links to your website and even without affecting your search engine rankings.
It does this by generating a “301 Redirect” or a Permanent Redirect when a user or spider visits your site through old permalinks and redirects them to the new permalinks of the same post.
I found this plugin via Everton’s blog who recently changed his permalinks using the Permalinks Migration plugin from something like this
www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2005/12/05/652/
to a better Permalink Structure like this
http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2005/12/05/post-title/
A good permalinks structure will help you improve your search engine rankings, so if you currently use a bad permalink structure like
http://www.example.com/?p=57
you can safely change your permalink structure to a better one using Permalinks Migration without fear of losing your traffic and pagerank 
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Posted on February 28th, 2007 | Category: WordPress Plugins |
Everton
February 28, 2007 at 1:08 pm
although I can’t say for certain if my Google traffic has increased, my Yahoo traffic has definitely increased and I’m certain it’s becuase of this change. It’s gone up from 5% of traffic to around 10%
Enblogopedia
February 28, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Please John, read this and update your article.
Mr.Byte
February 28, 2007 at 4:34 pm
The plugin I needed, its here just in time…. My homepage site is all with numbers so i decided to change last week and was little worried about it… now i can change confidently this weekend…
Sodhi
February 28, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Very nice plugin.
One question, what if Google indexes both old and new url pages.
Any issue with duplicate pages ?
Different URL but exactly same content ?
Everton
February 28, 2007 at 5:17 pm
the plugin sends a 301 to google to tell it to update its links so you wont get two urls referring to the same post.
Ibrahim - I don’t think your problem is related
JohnTP
February 28, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Sodhi- Google hates duplicate content. But you do not have to worry as the plugin tells the search engines that the page has permanently moved, and that the old address should be replaced by the new one.
Ryan
February 28, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Nice find. I don’t need it (not yet, at least), but it’ll be nice to have for those that do need it.
The Reviewer
February 28, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Wow, this is awesome most of my stuff was changed before the index, but I have some originals that are still showing up 404 on google, I will love to get those redirected! thanks!
Garry
February 28, 2007 at 11:14 pm
This is an awesome tool for helping people who are concerned with managing their 404 pages. Nice work John.
Ashish Mohta
March 1, 2007 at 10:57 pm
If its not like /?p=32 type…Anything that has text which defines your post it works.I dont think it will affect so much if you have year month and date along with the post.If your content is good and google likes it..you will be notice.
wildbluff_matt
March 3, 2007 at 12:31 am
So the “/?p” is a bad structure? I wasn’t aware of that. I wish they wouldn’t make that the default then. I’ll have to check into this plugin and see how it goes. I figure it’s better to fix it now before the content gets too big.
Ryan
March 3, 2007 at 12:56 am
Yeah the “/?p” is bad from the standpoint that having the title is better.
I also like the practice of just having the title without date in the URL so that you don’t have URLs that are too long.
Ashish Mohta
March 3, 2007 at 1:01 am
: If your site is trusted by google then little long url doesnt matter so much.I have seen news channels url !! Man you cant beat them and still u see them on google search.
Ryan
March 3, 2007 at 2:04 am
I know it doesn’t affect search engine rankings, but if someone tries to e-mail the link then it might get chopped off, thus the reason for removing the dates.
Ajay
March 4, 2007 at 4:47 pm
John, the /?p= is the default method of accessing your WordPress posts. Infact even with the new permalink structure you can still access the posts like this… give it a shot
The Permalinks plugin works best if you have a custom permalink structure and want to change it to a new permalink structure and don’t want to bother with .htaccess
Enblogopedia
March 4, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Well, as the author of the plugin didn’t answer yet..I believe that you need to edit your .htaccess in all cases!
Please check the comment number 126 in the plugin page!
Everton
March 4, 2007 at 6:32 pm
I really think your problems were due to something else Ibrahim
Ashish Mohta
March 4, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Even I had the same problem before.But then i was on windows not sure how it works on linux
: Yup i know that fact.I get hit from search engines with that kind of tag lol its funny
lyndonmaxewell
March 4, 2007 at 7:29 pm
@ Ryan I haven’t experienced the chopping of URLs yet when I email blog links. Does it apply to all the dates that you have?
wildbluff_matt
March 4, 2007 at 9:15 pm
If my old URLs were the default “/?p=…/” how do I define that when the plugin asks for the Old Permalink Structure? Probably a dumb question, but I’d appreciate help. Thanks.
And while I’m asking dumb questions, why wouldn’t I see my .htaccess file in my root wordpress directory?
Ajay
March 4, 2007 at 11:53 pm
I can’t help you on the seeing the .htaccess, maybe it isn’t there? Or maybe your ftp program isnt listing it.
You don’t need the plugin if you are moving from the default /?p= to a permalink structure. You only need if you are switching between permalink structures.
wildbluff_matt
March 5, 2007 at 1:32 am
: Ahh, no need for the plugin. Excellent. Thanks for the guidance.
wildbluff_matt
March 5, 2007 at 5:22 am
: I did end up needing to do some extra work. When I updated my Permalinks to the new structure the index.php was trying to link to the new structure, but the files had never been renamed. So I had to figure out what to enter for the Permalink Migration plugin. It asked for old structure, which turned out to be: “?.*”, but without the quotations. Then it worked, the old ?p links work for existing links out there, and the new structure from the index page.
: I was reading your post about the feeds changing. How can I test to see if mine are working?
Thanks for everyone’s assistance.
chatca
March 5, 2007 at 8:11 am
i has update my blog realesatte but google still index my old permalink, sometime linked to broken link (page not found). what can i do?
Enblogopedia
March 5, 2007 at 9:49 am
:If you were using the “id” as permalink then it won’t be a problem, as WP will still understand both new and old(default) structures!
Just take a look to Ajay`s comments, their`re very helpful.
As he said even after changing your permalink, to whatever you want…WP still understand the “/?p=” structure!
:It takes sometime before google update ALL your links, it may take A LOT of time, but as you`re using 301 redirect nothing(PR..etc) will be lost, so don’t worry.
What is your old permalink structure? and what are the broken links look like?
are they a feed links?
/number/number/what-ever/feed/ ?
wildbluff_matt
March 6, 2007 at 1:23 am
: That’s interesting about the links because it definitely didn’t work anymore once I went from ?p= to the permalink structure /year/month/day/title. The index page was trying to find the new structure, but since the old pages were published up ?p= it was returning 404’s.
It’s all worked out now anyways w/ the migration plugin.
chatca
March 6, 2007 at 11:36 am
my old structure year/month/day/title and i replace with /category/tile
but google still indexing first structure.
and much feed indexing by google.
what can i do?
Enblogopedia
March 6, 2007 at 7:09 pm
As I told you,Updating may take time!
Also I checked your indexing page and found only 24 pages?!! site:chatca.org
Also can you write some of the broken links here?!
antrs
March 12, 2007 at 10:15 pm
i’m trying to change my permalink in my blog with wordpress, realestatebigproperty.com. i forget what plugin that i use, and many page that indexed by google jump to 404 page not found… maybe i use wrong plugin.
some time i want to use your recommended plugin john.
Lucas McDonnell
March 16, 2007 at 1:47 am
I’ve been using this plugin for quite some time, and have to say that it works great. This kept me from having to do lots and lots of redirects in my .htaccess file.
antrs
March 19, 2007 at 9:59 pm
yes many time ago i use this plugin, and it’s works great.