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.

Mark Jaquith

<p>Isn’t it annoying when you craft a post title, and then the URL slug kind of falls short? Like, if your title is <strong>Breaking: Yankees win 3-2 in extra innings. I’m excited & literally can’t even</strong> and your post slug turns out like <strong>breaking-yankees-win-3-2-in-extra-innings-im-excited-literally-cant-even</strong>. “3-2” is ambiguous because all the words are already separated by dashes. “im” is not a word. “cant” means something else. The ampersand meaning “and” just got dropped. The leading “breaking-” will be silly when the date part of the URL is 3 years old. The whole URL is off. Doesn’t this make more sense? <strong>yankees-win-3-to-2-in-extra-innings-i-am-excited-and-literally-cannot-even</strong>. Sure it’s really long (and a future version of the plugin will help with that!), but it reads much better.</p>
<h3>Contribute</h3>
<p>Contribute to this plugin on GitHub:</p>
<p>https://github.com/markjaquith/slug-control/issues</p>


Slug Control

Helps you craft amazing post URL slugs, for that hand-crafted URL feel.

Backwards Compatible Permalinks vs Slug Control