[This is part of the Common WordPress Mistakes series to help bloggers, churches, ministries and nonprofits avoid common mistakes when creating a new website using the WordPress CMS.]
Another common WordPress mistake?
Yup.
Rest assured, if you follow this entire series and follow the recommendations I’ve outlined, you’ll find your venture into WordPress far more rewarding and successful.
Have a question? Care to contribute to this series? Leave a comment at the end of the post.
Common WordPress Mistakes
You might think this is my OCD shining through, but when you’ve gone to the trouble to make sure your permalinks look good and make sense to your readers and search engines, you might as well follow through and do it right!
Using Long, Confusing or Incomplete Permalinks
Here is what you need to lookout for with your permalinks:
- Confusing
- Too long
- Incomplete
Let’s start with the most annoying permalink violation (in my opinion):
- http://yourwebsite.com/about-2
- http://yourwebsite.com/contact-2
- http://yourwebsite.com/nameofthepage-2
I think you get the idea.
This is what happens:
WordPress user creates an About Page, doesn’t like it, creates a new one.
To work around this issue, you have to be cleaver about it. Even if you send your Page or Post to the Trash, you cannot give it a name that has been previously used. The only way to create a whole new About page, for example, is to Empty the Trash (thus completing the deletion process) or rename your old version to something else, like /about-old.
Now that you’ve got the old version resolved, you may continue forward with your new page—giving it the proper name. If you’re not sure how to edit your permalink, here’s how:
BOOM!
Easy.
Too Long
The other popular permalink mistake is making them too long. Even if you’re keeping your blog post titles within the proper length, you may want to consider editing your permalink down a little. I’ve seen some permalinks that were so long, they didn’t fit in the browser URL bar!
Do yourself a favor and shorten these when needed.
Incomplete
Again, this could be an OCD thing, but like I said before, what’s the use of having pretty permalinks if you’re not going to keep them pretty?
Using this blog post permalink as an example, an incomplete permalink might look something like this:
https://churchm.ag/common-wordpress-mist
Hmmm…common WordPress mist?
This usually occurs when you change your mind on the title or pause to think about it momentarily and WordPress moves forward on its own and saves the post for you, creating the permalink based on your title. It can also happen when you edit your permalink and then change the name of the post later, leaving your permalink different from your post title. Although not incomplete, it’s inaccurate.
Finally
Following these basic guidelines and building it into your typical blog posting, page creating workflow, will insure you’re WordPress site doesn’t come across sloppy, untidy and like you don’t know what you’re doing.
Do you keep your permalinks tidy?
[…] [Part 10] Long, Confusing or Incomplete Permalinks […]