WordPress URL Structure Change

As some of our readers may have noticed that we have changed URL structure at CrunchPress.com I have been using the domain/year/month/day/post-name URL structure. However I discovered if a random visitor from a search engine knows that the post they are loading is old, they are more likely to close the page quickly. Even some bloggers have started taking off dates from their blog posts.

It was a bit scary for me to change URLs due to SEO problems (I’m already having a problem with Google at the time of writing this post, more on it later). However changing URL proved very easy for me.

Here is the process,

1. Go to settings > Permalinks in your WordPress dashboard.
Here in ‘Custom Structure’ field enter, /%postname%/

2. Now open up your favorite FTP program, longin to FTP account of your WordPress install, open .htaccess to edit and enter following code.

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
Options +MultiViews
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

RedirectMatch permanent ^/[0-9]{4}/[0-9]{2}/[0-9]{2}/([a-z0-9\-/]+) http://crunchpress.com/$1

RewriteBase /
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

Change CrunchPress.com with your domain, save .htaccess and you are done!

I’ve assumed you are using domain/year/month/day/post-name structure, if your structure is different please tweak it accordingly.

NOTE:
1. If you are using Super-Cache or any other cache plugin for WordPress, please clear your cache before doing this procedure.
2. If you have a sitemap plugin installed, update/rebuild your sitemap manually.
3. 6) Add your blog to Google Webmaster Tools. Make sure that the sitemap was accepted and keep an eye on crawl errors periodically.