Permalink Structure & Broken Links

permalink structure

Ignorant of Structure

When I started blogging in 2007, I really didn’t know much about websites, blogging platforms, or permalink structure. Over the past few years, I have learned a lot about html, website design, and best practices for naming and organizing files online.

Ugly Links

I started out using Blogger because it was free and relatively easy to use. However, the website address was a bit cumbersome. It was chasemarch.blogspot.ca. The blog posts also had a rather lengthy name structure . . .

http://chasemarch.blogspot.ca/2010/07/wicked-skatepark-wicked-wipeout.html

For the time, that was fine. However, a few years ago, I moved the blog to chasemarch.com and began using wordpress.

The naming structure remained the same

http://chasemarch.com/2016/04/scott-pilgrims-london-on-connection.html

This is an ugly address. First off, it dates the content. There are certain posts in my archive that could be timeless. This kind of a link structure is very limiting.

New Permalink Structure

I changed the permalink structure the date portion is gone, as is the html tag. The new address for posts will look like this now.

http://chasemarch.com/scott-pilgrims-london-on-connection/

Much cleaner.

Broken Links

The problem is that I have many posts that link to other posts. Now, when you click on those links, you might see an error message.

If you find a broken link, you can search for a portion of the title and find where it is located now.

I am working on cleaning up all the links but with close to 2500 blog posts, it may take me a while.

Naming Tips

If you are new to blogging or designing a website, keep in mind these details

  1. Everything should be lower case.
  2. Use either _ or – between words and keep it consistent
  3. Set your permalink structure right away so it is clean.
  4. This is a good structure – domain-name/post-name/ (i.e. chasemarch.com/great-linking-tips/)
  5. Don’t change it or you will break your site

Tip 3 is very important. I have a lot of work to do to correct all the broken links. When I changed the structure, my old posts immediately were renamed. The problem though was Google could no longer find them. I had to resubmit my wesbite for the crawlers and this has since been fixed.

So, my blog is better organized and the linking looks better. I still have a problem with my podcast music files but I plan to keep them the same. Changing the naming structure here would be problematic.

Do you see the problem with this filename?

chasemarch.com/Word-is-Bond-Rap-Radio/WIBRapRadio Make it Last Forever.mp3

First off, it is not all lowercase. Secondly, there are spaces in the filename. When you link to this, it ends up looking like this

chasemarch.com/Word-is-Bond-Rap-Radio/WIBRapRadio%20263%20-%20Make%20it%20Last%20Forever.mp3

Now, I title my podcast audio files in a much cleaner way. The file name is simply “wibrapradio-epsiode#-title.mp3”

It is now predictable and easy to track. Unfortunately the original pathway has to remain the same, at least for now. I don’t want to lose anyone who has used a podcast catcher with the old address. These things are case sensitive, unfortunately.

Fixing It Up 

If you find a broken link and can’t find what you are looking for, contact me, and I will fix it and get the proper link to you. You can also use the search function in the blog sidebar. Thanks!