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Discover how to change your WordPress permalinks without losing traffic from existing links. Learn the implications and solutions here!
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Will Your Plain Style Permalinks Still Work After Changing Settings?

If you've been running a WordPress site for a while, you may have started with the default "plain" permalinks format, structured like /?p=123. As your site grows and you add more content, you might want to enhance your URLs to be more user-friendly and SEO-friendly by incorporating your post name directly into the URL. But this raises an important question: What happens to your old permalinks once you change the settings? Will they still work?

The Concern

When considering a shift in permalink structure, a legitimate concern is the potential impact on existing external links pointing to your website. You may find yourself worried that if these links stop functioning, you could lose traffic and search engine ranking. Let's address this head-on.

The Good News: Yes, They Will Work!

The good news is that after you change the permalink settings in WordPress, your old plain style permalinks will continue to function. Here’s what happens:

When you switch your permalink structure, WordPress has built-in mechanisms that allow old permalinks to still be recognized.

Visitors attempting to access the old URLs with the format /?p=123 will be effectively redirected to the new, more descriptive URLs you set up. This means that as long as your posts remain linked in some way, they won't simply disappear from the internet.

Technical Insights

Understanding how WordPress manages this can provide a bit of reassurance:

The plain style permalink uses a URL query parameter, which is a more basic form of linking when compared to pretty permalinks that use path structures.

WordPress’s internal routing system handles these queries efficiently, ensuring that even after a structural change, traffic will continue to flow to your site.

What If It Didn't Work?

Hypothetically, if this feature didn't exist, your old links could have been at risk of breaking. In that scenario, you would need a reliable way to implement redirection for hundreds of posts. Here are a few quick solutions (fire these up in case you ever find yourself needing them!):

Using a Redirection Plugin: Tools like Redirection or Simple 301 Redirects can help manage redirects easily without needing to edit your .htaccess file directly.

Manual Redirects: Although tedious, making manual redirects through the WordPress dashboard for notable posts or high-traffic pages could serve as a temporary solution.

Conclusion

In summary, if you're looking to update your permalinks to something more descriptive, rest assured that your old plain permalinks will remain functional after you make the changes. WordPress has thoughtfully built a way to preserve existing links and ensure ongoing access without requiring additional work from you. So, go ahead and improve your URLs confidently, knowing that your visitors will still reach your valuable content seamlessly!