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# How to Create Custom Permalinks in WordPress

Nov 24, 2024/by [Vadim Pavlovich](https://coma.lv/en/author/djcoma/)

Permalinks, or the URL structure of your pages, play an important role in a site’s search promotion. In this article we will show you how to create custom permalinks without hurting SEO.

## What Is a Permalink?

WordPress has a handy option for creating SEO-friendly URL structures called Permalinks. All you need to do is go to the Settings > Permalinks page and choose a URL structure.

![WordPress](https://coma.lv/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/wpsettings-permalinks.jpg)

There are plenty of options to choose from and you can even set a custom structure. The choice of permalink structure affects all posts and pages (both new and old) on your site, so you need to be careful with it. But what if you want a different URL only for some posts on your site? What if you want a custom permalink for a custom post type or for categories and tags? This is where you need a custom permalink. Essentially, a custom permalink is a URL structure applied to a specific item in WordPress without affecting the rest of the URL structure. Let’s see how you can create custom permalinks in WordPress.

## Creating Custom Permalinks in WordPress

There are two ways to create a custom permalink in WordPress. Often, when users talk about changing the permalink of a WordPress post, they mean post slugs. We will show you how to change a post slug. However, in some cases users want to create a completely custom URL structure, and we will show how to do that too.

## Method One. Changing the Slug of a Custom Permalink

In WordPress, the term slug refers to the name of a post, page, tag or category with a friendly URL. It is generated automatically by WordPress and used in the URL when you create a new item. For example, a post titled 20 Most Amazing Coffee Shops in Manhattan will have a slug like 20-most-amazing-coffee-shops-in-manhattan in WordPress. Depending on the permalink structure on your site, your post’s URL will look something like this:

*http://example.com/2016/02/20-most-amazing-coffee-shops-in-manhattan/*

The same happens with pages, custom post types, tags, categories, custom taxonomies and so on. If you want to change the slug in a permalink, it is very easy and you will not even need to install any plugins or write code.

## Changing the Slug of a Post or Page

The easiest way to change the slug of a post or page is by editing it. On the editor screen, just look under the post title and you will see the URL edit button.

![WordPress](https://coma.lv/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/edit-post-slug.jpg)

Clicking this button lets you change the post slug. You can use letters, numbers and hyphens in your slug. For a more SEO-friendly URL, use slugs that contain keywords.

## Changing Category and Tag Slugs

Changing the slug of a category or tag is actually very simple too. To do this, go to Posts > Categories and WordPress will show you a list of categories.

![WordPress](https://coma.lv/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/editcategories.jpg)

You can hover over a category and click the quick edit link. WordPress will show you the category title and its URL slug. You can change the slug and click the update button to save your changes.

![WordPress](https://coma.lv/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/quickedit-categoryslug.jpg)

The same method is used for tags and custom taxonomies.

## Creating Fully Custom Permalinks

Changing a post slug does not change your permalink structure. What if you want to change the permalink for a single post, page or taxonomy? For example, if your URL looks like this:

*http://example.com/2016/02/20-most-amazing-coffee-shops-in-manhattan/*

And you want to change it to something like this:

*http://example.com/best-lists/coffee-shops/top-coffee-shops-in-manhattan/*

Let’s look at another example. Your category URL in WordPress looks like this:

*http://example.com/category/travel*

Perhaps for this particular category you want it to look something like this:

*http://example.com/travel/*

In ordinary situations this would require you to change the permalink structure, but that would affect all the URLs on your site. Here is how to create a custom permalink without the risk of changing the URLs on your site. First you need to install and activate the Custom Permalinks plugin. After activation, just go to the edit screen of the page or post whose URL you want to change.

![WordPress](https://coma.lv/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/custom-permalink-post.jpg)

You can also edit categories and tags. Just go to Posts > Categories and click the edit link under the category you want to change. On the edit screen scroll all the way down and you will see the custom permalink field.

![WordPress](https://coma.lv/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/custom-permalink-category.jpg)

You can do the same for tags and custom taxonomies.

## Setting Up Redirects for Custom Permalinks

When you add a custom permalink for a new post, you no longer need to worry about redirects. On the other hand, if you change the URL of an already published post, you need to set up proper redirects. Users coming from search engines and other sites to your old URLs will not be able to find the page they are looking for unless you set up redirects. The same applies to your categories and tags. If a category / tag archive page has been indexed, it will become unavailable after the URL changes. You need to redirect users and search engines to the new URL.

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*Our specialization is WordPress website development and maintenance. Contact us for a free consultation — [vadim@coma.lv](mailto:vadim@coma.lv), [+371 29394520](tel:+37129394520)*

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