Title: Change permalink structure only for future posts
Last modified: April 17, 2017

---

# Change permalink structure only for future posts

 *  [zworks](https://wordpress.org/support/users/zworks/)
 * (@zworks)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-permalink-structure-only-for-future-posts/)
 * Hi, I am trying to change the permalink structure of blog posts only for the 
   future posts without changing the old URLs due to their SEO scores.
 * When i try to change the permalink as [http://www.domain.com/blog/catname/postname](http://www.domain.com/blog/catname/postname)
   it works:
 *     ```
       // rewriting post url
       function format_post_url( $post_link, $post, $leavename ) {
       	 if ( 'post' == get_post_type($post) && 'publish' == $post->post_status && strtotime('2017-04-01 00:00:00') < strtotime($post->post_date) ) { 
   
       		$post_link = rtrim($post_link,"/");
   
       		$post_pos = strrpos($post_link,"/");
       		$post = substr($post_link, $post_pos+1); // post name
   
       		$post_link = substr($post_link, 0,strlen($post_link)-strlen($post)-1);
   
       		$cat_pos = strpos($post_link,"/",8);
       		$cat = substr($post_link, $cat_pos+1); // category name
   
       		if(substr($cat,0,3)=="en/"){
       			$cat = substr($cat, 3);
       		}
   
       		$post_link = substr($post_link, 0,strlen($post_link)-strlen($cat)-1);
   
       		return $post_link."/blog/".$cat."/".$post."/";
   
       	}
       	return $post_link;
       }
   
       add_filter( 'post_link', 'format_post_url', 100, 3 );
       ```
   
 * But when i try to change the permalink as [http://www.domain.com/postname](http://www.domain.com/postname)
   it gives a 404 error, like following:
 * `return $post_link."/".$post."/";`
 * Please note that i can achieve this easily by changing the permalink structure
   via the WP backend but it will alter all the URLs, past & future, but i just 
   want to change the future ones.
 * Can you guys please help me ? I even update the permalink structure settings 
   in the wp backend after making these changes but it still doesn’t work.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Moderator [tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobifjellner/)
 * (@tobifjellner)
 * [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-permalink-structure-only-for-future-posts/#post-9038055)
 * I’m afraid this is not easily done, since the permalink structure is a site-wide
   option.
    When I faced the same situation, the easiest solution turned to be transferring
   link value via 301 redirects for all old posts into the new permalink structure.
   I simply made a list of old vs. new addresses and put a row for each changed 
   address in .htaccess, like this: `redirect 301 /image1 https://site.com/text/
   191/image1/`
 * If you don’t introduce any new elements in the structure, then a rewrite rule
   with permanent readdressing may be better (where you typically would end the 
   entry with `[L,R=301]`). There are many sources on the Internet about 301 redirect
   using mod.rewrite.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Change permalink structure only for future posts’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [permalink](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/permalink/)
 * [post-name](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/post-name/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 1 reply
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tobifjellner/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/change-permalink-structure-only-for-future-posts/#post-9038055)
 * Status: not resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics