How to Create Your Own WordPress Permalinks

Would you like to use WordPress to generate customized permalinks for your posts, pages, and other post types?

In this article, we'll demonstrate how to customise WordPress permalinks without impacting your SEO.

We've prepared an easy-to-navigate table of contents because this is a detailed tutorial on creating custom permalinks in WordPress:

• The definition of a custom permalink
• How to Modify the Permalink Structure in WordPress
• How to Modify the WordPress Category and Tag URL Prefix
• How to Modify the URL of a Specific WordPress Post or Page
• How to Modify the WordPress Tag or Category URL
• How to Modify the WordPress Author Page URL
• How to Make Completely Unique WordPress Permalinks

The definition of a custom permalink

Permalinks are the permanent URLs of your website's individual blog posts, pages, and other archive pages.

Your permalink should aim to produce an intuitive URL structure that is understandable to both people and search engines.

As an illustration, see https://example.com/best-cometics-brands-2022/.

WordPress gives website owners a variety of permalink choices to pick from. Visit the Settings » Permalinks page to see them.

WordPress gives options for customising the individual URLs of posts, pages, categories, tags, and other parts of your website in addition to modifying the permalink structure as a whole.

Additionally, you may utilise WordPress plugins to override the built-in WordPress settings and generate entirely unique permalinks for particular portions of your website.

Let's look at each option individually. We'll begin with the pre-installed features that come with your WordPress website by default.

How to Modify the Permalink Structure in WordPress

Go to the Settings » Permalinks page in your WordPress admin panel if you wish to modify the entire method used to generate URLs for your website.

You can choose a URL structure for each of your posts right here. Additionally, you can design a unique structure for your WordPress URLs by using the tags displayed on the screen. Use the post's title (%postname%), category (%category%), and year of publication (%year%) as examples.

Remember to click the 'Save Changes' button to save your changes.

The post name should be included in the URL, which is what we advise doing. This improves your WordPress SEO by making your URLs more user-friendly.

However, updating permalinks can have an impact on your SEO rankings if you already have a website that receives traffic from search engines.

How to Modify the WordPress Category and Tag URL Prefix

WordPress by default bases its category URLs on /category/ and its tags pages on /tag/.

Similar to the following examples

https://example.com/category/wordpress/
https://example.com/tag/webdevelopment/

These basic prefixes can be changed by heading to Settings » Permalinks and simply inputting new prefixes.

Remember to click the 'Save Changes' button to save your changes.

Your website will now be functioning with a new category and tag base, like the ones below:

https://example.com/service/wordpress/ (for category pages) (for category pages)
https://example.com/hashtag/webdevelopment Regarding tag pages

How to Modify the URL of a Specific WordPress Post or Page

Once you've established your first permalink structure, WordPress will utilise it as a template for all links on your site.

To make individual posts, pages, and custom post types more SEO-friendly, you may also alter the URL slug inside the URL structure.

From the post edit page within the WordPress content editor, you may change the slug portion of the URL.

You must first click "Publish" or "Update" to save your draught if you're creating a new post or page.

Then, in the 'Permalink' meta box, simply click on the URL slug.

Then switch to a unique permalink in the URL slug.

When finished, press the "Update" button to preserve the updated permalink.

How to Modify the WordPress Tag or Category URL

We previously shown how to change the category and tag base prefixes in WordPress. This step will demonstrate how to modify the URL keywords for a certain category or tag.

Simply navigate to Posts » Categories and select the category you want to edit by clicking the 'Edit' option.

In order to save your changes to the category slug, be sure to click the "Update" button.

The same procedure can be followed to edit a specific tag by navigating to the Posts » Tags screen.

You may also use the same way to edit any custom taxonomies.

How to Modify the WordPress Author Page URL

For each author listed on your website, WordPress will automatically generate an author page URL.

It appears as follows:

https://example.com/author/david/

The slug in the previous case is david, while the base is author.

The problem is that WordPress doesn't offer a way to modify either the author URL base or the slug.

Thankfully, a WordPress plugin can be used to modify this in only a few clicks. 

Installing and activating the Edit Author Slug is the first thing you need to do.

Visit the Users > All Users page after activation. Then, click the option that says "Edit" just underneath the username.

Scroll down to the "Edit Author Slug" area on the following page.

Changing the author permalink base is as easy as going to Settings » Edit Author Slug.

Here, you can specify a distinct author base for users with various user roles.

How to Make Completely Unique WordPress Permalinks

You can modify WordPress permalinks in some ways using each of the methods mentioned above. They are unable to assist you in making entirely unique permalinks, though.

That's because WordPress doesn't come with this feature by default.

Thankfully, there is a plugin that can be useful. This is for you if you want to change some parts of your site's URLs from what WordPress automatically generates.

Installing and activating the Custom Permalinks plugin should be your first priority. 

After activation, you must access the post where you want to generate a custom permalink.

Instead of editing the permalink as explained above, you'll find the option to create a custom permalink below the editor in the 'Custom Permalink' box.

We trust that this article has shown you how to customise permalinks in WordPress.