Page Name Permalinks and Blog Page Permalinks

[glassfirenze 0]

Hi All, I have Pagelines Pro and I need most of my pages to have the page name (About, Classes, Contact, etc.) in the URL (www.glassfirenze.com/about) but I also have two pages that meant as traditional blogs so a universal permalinks custom structure of %pagename% doesn't work for me since I don't think the blog post names will work well like that? I keep reading how it is important to have the name of the page in the URL like traditional web sites do, but I've also read that it is cumbersome with blog posts as far as search engines and good SEO. I've searched and searched the forum and haven't found the answer I want. lol - which is can I have both static page names and id based blog names and if so how? Thank You! Deborah

[catrina 103]

I think this calls for more in-depth customization. Have you considered editing the blog post permalinks within the post editor so that they're shorter?

[glassfirenze 0]

Hi Catrina, I don't see where that is possible, I am not given an option to change my post permalink in the edit mode. What confuses me most is that if I am in a page (edit mode) the permalink structure is http://www.glassfirenze.com/?page_id=1437 so it is differentiating that it is a page_id= and giving it an id# instead of the page name - but if I go into a post edit mode the permalink structure is http://www.glassfirenze.com/?p=4 differentiating that it is a post (p=) not a page... BUT when I click on change permalinks in either place I am brought to one permalinks area where there is only one universal choice... shouldn't there be the ability to choose permalinks for pages and permalinks for posts? Somewhere in the program that difference is already being recognized... And if you can edit a post permalink in the edit mode how? Thanks for trying to answer! Deborah

[catrina 103]

What if you changed the permalink settings so that it's set to Month and Name so that when you want to adjust the URL name of a blog post (in the post editor), you can just shorten it and static pages will still have the page name format, too. Does that make sense?

[glassfirenze 0]

Hi Catrina, Well... I changed the permalink to %pagename%, no month or year and I see with that how you are then given the option to edit pages and posts permalinks... :-) I think this will work out for me. From what I read online as long as I don't have tons and tons of blog posts my site shouldn't get weighted down... Something for others reading this... I didn't understand at first the script that came up after I changed the permalink which told me to add some script to my htaaccess file... once I added the script my pages showed. I have to give kudos to the creators of Pagelines... though I'm a novice web designer so I have to read and re-read things a lot to understand them and make mistakes along the way... in the end, most everything I've needed to do actually had an answer in the program or the forums... it was more about knowing what the question was than where the answer was. I love this program and can hardly wait until my site is complete! :-)

[bonngean 0]

@Deborah, Go to Settings >> Permalinks and change the custom structure to:

/%postname%/

Then, hit save at the bottom of the page so the settings are permanent. This will allow you to create pages on your site that resemble the URL link of: http://yourdomain.com/contact/ http://yourdomain.com/about/ etc. etc. Adding a New Page: Let's create the page About for your site: http://imgur.com/GjKzR As you can see, the permalink names takes on the title name. Since the title for this page is About, this is what your permalink becomes. Creating Permalinks for Your Blog Posts: If your blog was installed in the root directory of your domain, such as: http://www.yourdomain.com/ then your permalinks would work the same way for your blog posts as they do your blog pages. i.e. they will take on the name of the title you've chosen for your blog post. For example: If your blog post title is About Us, the blog permalink becomes: http://www.yourdomain.com/about-us (as WP adds a dash in between each word). If your blog was installed into a directory named blog like: http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/ then the same About Us post would be listed as: http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/about-us (as the permalink URL). What does this all mean? It boils down to how you want your URLs to be handled. YOU SHOULD NOT have to change the permalink every time you create a new page or post unless: (1) you already have a page with the same name, (2) you want a shorter url, (3) you have a specific keyword you want to focus. I hope this has helped you. --Bonnie

[glassfirenze 0]

Just wanted to say that I appreciate the help! :-)

[araba93 0]

Very helpful! Thanks!