Should I enable permalinks?

[Emma]

OK, excuse my ignorance on this subject. When I created my blog I used the default permalink option. I've been reading, that I should change it to the custom option something like /%post name%/. The thing is I've written about 50 posts and they show up now when I do a search in Google on them.

I don't want to break all the links. Although not all articles are important but there are a few that seem OK. I also use "All in One SEO Pack". So the descriptions in the post slug are already descriptive.

I've read conflicting information about manually updating old posts. Using redirects, etc. If some smart person could shed some light on this I would be most grateful. Thanks Emma

[Dan Schulz]

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182915

I know, the thread has to do with SEO, but it does teach you how to manually do a 301 redirect on your files.

[smittenbite]

is this with wordpress? i use wordpress and when i changed it from having the ?p=# form to a post name form they had, all links still worked the same

[Emma]

is this with word press? i use word press and when i changed it from having the ?p=# form to a post name form they had, all links still worked the same


Yes it's with Wordpress. I was going to add a widget to do 301 redirects. But then I believe I read somewhere that this was built in to the updated version of wordpress.

I am thinking I can just change it. But I just want some other opinions. I don't want to mess things up. Some of the articles I read could of been old.

I use the latest version of wordpress, hosted by dreamhost. I'll see if anyone else has some insight but I think you might be on to something. Thanks, Emma

[smittenbite]

well if youre on the latest one, you can just go to options> permalinks.
then theres four options , default, date and title and numeric and then custom. why not just switch it over to date and title and seeif the default links still work (they do for me)? (might wanna save a deafult link first to test it on). the update would be instant, and if it doesnt work, you can change it back (instantly)

[Emma]

well if youre on the latest one, you can just go to options> permalinks.
then theres four options , default, date and title and numeric and then custom. why not just switch it over to date and title and seeif the default links still work (they do for me)? (might wanna save a deafult link first to test it on). the update would be instant, and if it doesnt work, you can change it back (instantly)


OK, from what I can tell your right. The latest version of WordPress has the 301 redirect plugin functionality built in. So I changed to custom /%post_id%/%postname%/, I didn't want to use category because I may still change my categories in the future. Thanks, Emma