Chris A. a11n

<p>Backwards Compatible Permalinks helps prevent 404 errors when switching between permalink structures.</p>
<p>It achieves this by appending a set of backwards compatible post rewrite rules. This ensures posts are still accessible at their previous permalink after the permalink structure is updated.</p>
<h4>Example</h4>
<p>Let’s say your permalink structure is set to “Month and name” and you have a post titled “I Love WordPress.” That particular post would live at <code>https://example.com/2019/03/i-love-wordpress/</code>.</p>
<p>But what if you wanted to switch to the “Post name” permalink structure and have your post live at <code>https://example.com/i-love-wordpress/</code> instead?</p>
<p>You could but this would result in the existing post permalink 404ing when visited. Which is problematic if the previous URL was bookmarked or shared on social media.</p>
<p>With Backwards Compatible Permalinks installed your post would be accessible at both the old and new permalink structures:</p>
<ul>
<li><code>https://example.com/2019/03/i-love-wordpress/</code></li>
<li><code>https://example.com/i-love-wordpress/</code></li>
</ul>
<h4>Caveats</h4>
<ul>
<li>This plugin does not work retroactively. i.e. you must have the plugin installed and activated prior to switching permalink structures before backwards compatibility will work.</li>
<li>Currently only standard posts are supported.</li>
<li>Backwards compatibility is not supported between certain permalink structure updates. This is due to a clash between permalink structure regex matching.</li>
<li>Backwards compatibility is only provided between the most recent permalink structure update. i.e. you cannot change your permalink structure 3 times and have backwards compatibility across all 3 structures.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Deactivate or uninstall</h4>
<p>After deactivating or uninstalling this plugin please ensure you visit Settings > Permalinks in the WordPress admin area to flush your rewrite rules.</p>
<h4>Contributing</h4>
<p>Contributions are <a href="https://github.com/aprea/backwards-compatible-permalinks" rel="nofollow ugc">welcomed on GitHub</a>.</p>
<h3>From within WordPress</h3>
<ol>
<li>Visit ‘Plugins > Add New’.</li>
<li>Search for ‘Backwards Compatible Permalinks’.</li>
<li>Activate Backwards Compatible Permalinks from your Plugins page.</li>
</ol>
<h3>Manually</h3>
<ol>
<li>Upload the <code>backwards-compatible-permalinks</code> folder to the <code>/wp-content/plugins/</code> directory.</li>
<li>Activate the Backwards Compatible Permalinks plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.</li>
</ol>


Backwards Compatible Permalinks

Provides a degree of backwards compatibility when switching between permalink structures.

Jeremy O'Connell

<p>Once this plugin has been installed you’ll easily be able to manage all your site redirects. In fact the plugin has no limits to the number of redirects you may manage. It works from dozens to millions (although you’ll need more than budget hosting for millions).  All this is done through your familiar WordPress control panel.</p>
<p>You add redirect links, assign them unique names (so visitors can’t start guessing all your links), have the ability to enter notes (optional), and may even turn redirects on and off.  This allows you to disable links that you don’t want redirected out but aren’t quite ready to delete.  Now link aliases are supported!</p>
<p>Link aliases allow you to share the same destination URL for multiple names.  This provides several advantages.  For starters you may easily change your link names/titles without voiding the old ones.  Also there are times when targeted link names work better.  For example you might have a link to wrinkle cream and thus use wrinklecream, facialcream, fightwrinkles, etc.  These names could be used in different articles, emails, forums, etc.  While you could do this before it required a new redirect profile for each link name/title.  The old method wasn’t a deal killer but it made management more of a hassle if you had to change the destination URL as you had to remember to change it for all profiles.  Plus it wasn’t as easy to see all the links using the same destination URL.  Well those days are gone with link aliases! So go ahead and get creative!</p>
<p>Also you are able to easily search through your redirect records to quickly locate matches.  Plus you have total control over where visitors are sent if plugin can’t find a redirect match.  All of this is easily changable at any time through WordPress.</p>
<p>Language Support: Should work for all languages that use the A-Z alphabet.  Plugin only displays text (link names) entered by you.  The only limitation is possible removal of unknown characters outside standard A-Z.</p>
<p>Shameless Promotion: See other <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?q=cleverwise" rel="ugc">Cleverwise WordPress Directory Plugins</a></p>
<p>Thanks for looking at the Cleverwise Plugin Series! To help out the community reviews and comments are highly encouraged.  If you can’t leave a good review I would greatly appreciate opening a support thread before hand to see if I can address your concern(s).  Enjoy!</p>


Cleverwise Redirect It

Allows you to easily handle redirects to an unlimited number of offsite and onsite links. Also changing a destination link is fast and easy.

Backwards Compatible Permalinks vs Cleverwise Redirect It