How To Create A Pretty URL For Wordpress

After installing Wordpress, the default URL’s are quite ugly and are not good for your overall site optimization.

For example, the default URL’s look something like this, http://www.globalevangelists.com/?p=123

Take a look at the end of the URL, Notice the /?p=123, Everything after the trailing / is the title of your category, page or post.

Leaving your site set up with the default URL settings has a a few disadvantages that you may want to address.

Your site is not set up for Search Engine Optimization.
You make it harder for your visitors to find or recognize specific web pages.
and It makes it harder for you to manage your pages.

Changing the way your URL’s look is simply a matter of changing your Permalinks within the Settings section of your Wordpress site.

To change the Permalinks for your Wordpress site follow the steps outlined in this tutorial.

First up you need to log into your Wordpress admin area.

Once your logged in, look to the left of your administrators dashboard and look under the Settings tab for the Permalinks link.

Click on the Permalinks link to continue.

In the next screen you will see two sections, Common Settings and Optional, I will explain these in detail below the image.

1; You will notice you have a list of five Common Settings, It’s the bottom one titled Custom Structure, that we are interested in. Click on the Custom Structure Option.

There are a couple of options that seem to be quite popular when setting up your permalinks, the option that I use looks something like this… /%category%/%postname%/

By using the above setting, your URL’s will display the name of your category and post title in a readable text format.

For example the same link that we used for our permalink example above will now look like this, http://www.globalevangelists.com/training/webhosting-training/how-to-open-an-account-with-webhostingpad/

Notice how the Categories, Sub-categories and the Post name are all easy to read and recognize, Plus as an added bonus, you are also taking advantage of having additional Keywords in your Meta data.

Another popular option to use for a Custom Structure is… /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

Using this Custom Structure will remove the category and replace it with the date your post was published.

Here’s an example of the same link…http://www.globalevangelists.com/2009/07/06/how-to-open-an-account-with-webhostingpad/

Or if you just want to display your post title only simply use… /%postname%/

This type of Custom Structure will only display your post title after your domain name.

Example… http://www.globalevangelists.com/how-to-open-an-account-with-webhostingpad/

2; In the Optional Section you can choose what you would like to name your Category and Tag pages.

By leaving these blank the default name for a category page is Category which means when you click on a category link in your sites menu bar your URL’s will look like this… http://www.globalevangelists.com/category/training/

The Tag page is the same but instead of /category/ it’s replaced with /tag/

If you have a specific name you want to call your Category and Tag pages then add it in these sections.

For example I want to change the word Category to Topics all I would do is add the word topics in the Category text area, my Category pages will now have the following URL… http://www.globalevangelists.com/topics/training/

Follow the same instructions with your Tag section, but a suggestion Don’t call your Category pages and your Tag pages the same thing, use a different name for each.

…and thats how you customise your URL’s in wordpress.

3; After you have made any changes click on the Save Changes button.

Adjusting the permalinks settings will give your site the best results in site optimization.

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