Title: Changing the Permalink structure
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Changing the Permalink structure

 *  Resolved [hajejan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hajejan/)
 * (@hajejan)
 * [18 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-the-permalink-structure/)
 * When I set up my WordPress blog about 3 years ago, I decided to choose ‘/%year%/%
   postname%/’ as my custom permalink structure. Now, I’m regretting that quite 
   badly, and wish I had just gone for /%postname%/
 * to clarify, currently, my URLs are all like so:
 * [http://www.photocritic.org/2006/colour-to-black-and-white/](http://www.photocritic.org/2006/colour-to-black-and-white/)
 * but I would like them to be:
 * [http://www.photocritic.org/colour-to-black-and-white/](http://www.photocritic.org/colour-to-black-and-white/)
 * I know I can just change the custom structure, but I’m worried about people still
   having bookmarks to the old URLs. Is it possible to change a setting in WordPress,
   or to add a line to my .htaccess to ensure that the stragglers get a 301 redirect?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [JHouse](https://wordpress.org/support/users/jhouse/)
 * (@jhouse)
 * [18 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-the-permalink-structure/#post-732015)
 * If you have access to a control panel, such as cpanel (or hsphere, plesk), through
   your web host, you can add the 301 redirects quite easily. Look for an option
   called “Redirects” and subsequently redirect the old urls to the new. It’s pretty
   simple and quick.
 * An important note though is that Google’s Page Rank values won’t be passed on
   to the new url. So, if one of your links had a Page Rank of 5 (which is great),
   chances are the new url will drop to a zero. This can severely affect your search
   engine rankings, unfortunately. A way around this though is to contact the sites
   linking to the old url and ask them to please change it to the new one. This 
   can be quite the challenge however as some of the guys might be too lazy to do
   so. Lots of “webmasters” are quick to add, but slow to change.
 * Good luck.
 *  [Austin Matzko](https://wordpress.org/support/users/filosofo/)
 * (@filosofo)
 * [18 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-the-permalink-structure/#post-732016)
 * [Here](http://scott.yang.id.au/code/permalink-redirect/) is a plugin that claims
   to do just that.
 *  Thread Starter [hajejan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hajejan/)
 * (@hajejan)
 * [18 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-the-permalink-structure/#post-732148)
 * filosofo: That plugin was my saviour 🙂

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Changing the Permalink structure’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [htaccess](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/htaccess/)
 * [permalinks](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/permalinks/)
 * [redirect](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/redirect/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 3 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [hajejan](https://wordpress.org/support/users/hajejan/)
 * Last activity: [18 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/changing-the-permalink-structure/#post-732148)
 * Status: resolved

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