Permalinks are the permanent URLs (addresses of web pages) to individual pages and posts, as well as category and tag archives, on your website. It’s a good idea to check these settings when you first create your WordPress blog before you start blogging.
We want to make sure the setting is correct and that your links have your post name rather than a number. This is how to check what your permalinks are set to.
Click on ‘Settings’ then ‘Permalinks’:
You will then be greeted with the following screen:
As you can see you can have URLs displayed in various ways, the top setting named ‘plain’ shows your pages as a number.
Personally, I think displaying your URL with the post name is much better than displaying it as a number because anyone looking at your URL is not going to know what the post is about if it’s just a number.
What Should I Set It to?
Either set it to ’post name’ or ‘custom structure’ but make sure if you set it to ‘custom structure’ that it contains the tag /%postname% in the custom structure box.
It may already be set like this in the custom structure box once you install WordPress, this tag is the same as setting it to the post name setting so either will be adequate.
Having your links set like this is simple, straightforward, better for SEO and intelligible to humans. Once you have done this, save your settings.
You can also add more tags if you require to the custom structure box so that your URL contains information such as the year, author, day e.t.c. It’s entirely up to you. I prefer to keep it simple and just have the post name.
