Are you looking to regenerate permalinks in WordPress?
Broken links show 404 errors. Neither you nor your visitors can see the content on your website. Having 404 leads to poor browsing experience, losing rankings and brand credibility.
Sometimes all it takes is to reset the permalinks to sort out the errors. If you have access to the WordPress admin dashboard, you can regenerate WordPress permalinks in a few clicks.
In this quick tutorial, we will learn why permalinks break and how you can reset them.
What are Permalinks in WordPress?
Permalinks in WordPress is the full URL of any post, page or media content on the WordPress website. The URL is permanent. A permalink is made of two parts. Domain name and Slug. Slug is what comes after the Domain name. Slugs could contain date, categories and anything you add.
We recommend making easy to read permalinks so anyone can take a look at them and understand what the content is supposed to be on that URL.
Several ways WordPress allows you to have permalinks:
Why do Permalinks break?
Permalinks do not cause any problems. They are permanent and just work.
But sometimes, they break and show 404 errors. It might happen for the entire website, or only for the blog pages.
The reason why it happens varies:
- New plugin installation: Installing a new plugin causes conflict with the URL structure.
- Restoring a backup:Restoring the WordPress website from an old backup can also cause this.
- Migrating a Server: When you move the WordPress website to new hosting, it can create problems with URLs.
- Updates: Updated themes, plugins and WordPress core can create compatibility issues leading to breaking the URLs.
- Changes in .htaccess file: Updating, or altering your .htaccess file incorrectly.
Well, whatever the reason and underlying cause, your first fix should be clearing the WordPress cache. After that you should regenerate the permalinks.
How to Regenerate Permalink in WordPress?
The steps to regenerate permalink in WordPress:
- Login to WordPress admin dashboard
- Navigate to Settings >> Permalinks from the left side panel
- Click on the Save Changes button you will find on the page
- A notification with Permalinks structure updated will appear.
That’s it. The permalinks are updated and hopefully your WordPress website will work again.
FAQ
What does it mean to flush permalinks?
Flushing permalinks means updating the website’s URL structure. Sometime, due to migrations, and compatibility issues, the permalinks does not work as expected. You can manually refresh them.
Also Read
- 8 Types of Image Files and When to use Them
- Best Online Grammar Checker Tools for WordPress
- WordPress Breadcrumbs? How to enable them
Wrap Up
As you can see, the permalink problem might look complicated, but it is much easier to solve. Though you have to have a WordPress admin dashboard. If you lose it, there are many steps involved to get it back.
That’s why having quality WordPress hosting helps. They can do migration and manage backups without breaking your website structure.
I hope this article helps you to fix the permalinks in WordPress. If not, feel free to leave it in the comments section.
