WordPress Permalink Settings: How to Choose the Best Structure

WordPress permalink settings decide what every post URL on your site looks like, and they are one of the first things to get right on a new blog. A clean, readable structure helps visitors and search engines understand your pages, and choosing it early means you never have to change it later. This guide explains each option on the Permalinks screen, how to build a custom structure, and which one to pick in 2026.

Quick answer: In WordPress, go to Settings > Permalinks, pick a structure and click Save Changes. For most new sites, Post name gives short, readable URLs. News sites may prefer Month and name. Choose once, before your site grows, because changing the structure later changes every URL.

Permalink is short for “permanent link”: the address of a single post or page that other sites, social posts and search engines link to. Once those links build up, the address should stay the same for years.

Where to find WordPress permalink settings

1. Log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Open Settings > Permalinks.
3. Choose one of the common settings, or enter a custom structure.
4. Click Save Changes. WordPress updates its rewrite rules straight away.

Saving the Permalinks screen without changing anything is also a handy fix: it refreshes the rewrite rules, which often cures sudden 404 errors on posts after a plugin or server change.

The permalink options explained

According to the official WordPress permalinks documentation, the Permalinks screen offers these choices:

• Plain: example.com/?p=123. Works everywhere but tells readers nothing about the page. Avoid it on a public site.
• Day and name: example.com/2026/10/28/sample-post/. Very dated; long URLs.
• Month and name: example.com/2026/10/sample-post/. Common on news sites and long-running blogs.
• Numeric: example.com/archives/123. Short but not descriptive.
• Post name: example.com/sample-post/. Short, readable and a popular choice for new sites.
• Custom Structure: build your own pattern from structure tags.

How to build a custom permalink structure

A custom structure combines fixed text with structure tags. The main tags are:

• %year%, %monthnum%, %day%: the post date.
• %postname%: the post slug, for example “this-is-a-great-post”.
• %post_id%: the post’s unique ID number.
• %category%: the category slug (subcategories become nested folders).
• %author%: the author’s name.

WordPress recommends ending a custom structure with %postname% or %post_id% so each URL points to one post. QuickOnlineTips, for example, has used /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ since 2006: the year and month, no day, and the post name at the end.

Tips for a good structure

• Keep it short. Fewer folders mean URLs that are easier to read and share.
• Be careful with categories in URLs. If you later move a post to another category, its URL changes.
• Edit the slug before publishing. In the post editor you can shorten the slug to the main keyword, for example “wordpress-permalinks” instead of the full title.
• Use lowercase words and hyphens. WordPress does this automatically from the title.

Which WordPress permalink structure should you choose?

• New blog or business site: Post name. It suits evergreen content and stays clean when you update old posts.
• News or very frequent publishing: Month and name keeps URLs unique when similar headlines repeat.
• Existing site with traffic: keep the structure you already have. A date in the URL is far less harmful than changing every URL at once.

We learned the last point the hard way. We once moved QOT from dated URLs to post-name URLs, saw search traffic drop and switched back. The full story, with the redirect steps, is in our guide on how to change WordPress permalinks structure.

What changed since this post was first written

When we wrote the original version of this post in 2006, the setting lived under Options > Permalinks, and the WordPress Codex warned that a post-name-only structure could clash with other pages, so we chose a date-based URL. Today Post name is one of the standard choices on the Permalinks screen, the menu lives under Settings > Permalinks, and the official help has moved from the Codex to the WordPress documentation site.

If you must change permalinks later

• Back up your site first.
• Add 301 redirects from every old URL to its new address. The free Redirection plugin can handle this and log new 404 errors.
• Update internal links so they point to the new URLs directly. Our guide to find and remove broken internal links shows how.
• Expect a temporary dip in search traffic while Google recrawls the site.

Not sure what a post’s permalink is? See how to find permalinks of blog articles.

FAQ

What is the best permalink setting in WordPress?

For most new sites, Post name. It gives short, readable URLs that do not age. For an established site, the best setting is usually the one you already use.

Does changing permalinks affect SEO?

Yes. Every URL changes, so you need 301 redirects, and rankings can dip while search engines process the new addresses.

Why do my posts show 404 errors after changing permalinks?

The rewrite rules may not have updated. Go to Settings > Permalinks and click Save Changes. If that fails, check that your server allows WordPress to write its rewrite rules (on Apache this is the .htaccess file).

Can I change the URL of just one post?

Yes. Edit the slug in that post’s settings, then add a 301 redirect from the old URL so existing links keep working.