Changing permalinks

[Tracy]

I have built a few wordpress sites but still fumbling my way through at times and not fully understands some things. One thing that still confuses me are the permalinks. I remember for a couple of sites I was successfully able to change the permlinks structure from the default to Post name but then try again with a different site and it seems to break the link. and get The requested URL /folder/about-us/ was not found on this server. First can anyone help me this and secondly, what is the concensus on this, do most use the Post name or default and what is better if either for search engines.

[Ben Siegfried]

I like to use custom: /%category%/%postname%/%post_id%/

My understanding is that it is better for SEO, I'm not an expert at SEO though.

[nutsandbolts]

Anything other than the default is better for SEO - numbers don't tell search engines much, but words certainly do. I always use either the postname, postname with date (if a client needs it), or postname/postid as Ben mentioned above. I never, ever recommend the default permalinks, and honestly I'm not sure why they're set as the default.

If you change permalinks on a site that already has content, any internal links (for example, a link in a blog post to an older post) will be broken because they're using the old permalink structure. You can get around this by using a 301 redirect in your site's .htaccess file to direct links from the old structure to the new one, or you can use one of many available plugins to find the old links and alter them to fit the new structure. Hope that helps!

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Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+

[Tracy]

Thankyou both for the replies. I have been reading and trying plugins etc but am just not getting the reason why some sites I have been able to change from the default and others not. For example now I have used the duplicator plugin for a site that I have previously done to run for testing etc. on my local machine ie; localhost. I've deleted all pages but the homepage to start fresh mostly because of the permalink problem. And even adding a brand new page I get the same
Not Found
The requested URL /OLIVER/about/ was not found on this server.

[nutsandbolts]

It looks like your database still thinks the site is local - it's not using the URL. Check Settings > General to see what the site address and home address are set to. You may need to edit the wp_options table in the database to update those values.

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Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+

[Tracy]

Thanks, yes it all looks ok. I don't see any reference to the old URL anywhere in the database or in the Settings>General either.

[Tracy]

I'm hoping to find a solution so I can change the permalinks of the original website that I actually duplicated.
So, what is the proper way to set the permalinks when first starting a new website. Install and change from default before going any further I guess?

[nutsandbolts]

Yes, that's always the very first thing I do on a new install. Change permalinks, then set the time zone.

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Andrea Whitmer, Owner/Developer, Nuts and Bolts Media
I provide development and training services for designers • Find me on Twitter and Google+

[merlinberg]

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