How to Set Up Permalinks in WordPress

Permalinks are the permanent URLs that point to your WordPress posts, pages, and other content. By default, WordPress uses a URL format like yourdomain.com/?p=123 - which isn't very readable or SEO-friendly. Changing this to a clean, descriptive URL format is one of the first things you should do after installing WordPress.

How to Change Your Permalink Structure

1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings > Permalinks.
2. You'll see several options for your permalink structure. We recommend selecting Post name, which produces clean URLs like yourdomain.com/my-blog-post.
3. Click Save Changes.

Permalink Structure Options

• Plain - /?p=123 (not recommended)
• Day and name - /2026/03/13/sample-post/
• Month and name - /2026/03/sample-post/
• Numeric - /archives/123
• Post name - /sample-post/ (recommended)
• Custom structure - Build your own format using available tags

Why Post Name Is Recommended

The Post name structure keeps URLs short, readable, and relevant to your content. Search engines like Google use URL structure as a ranking signal, and clean URLs are easier to share and remember.

Custom Permalink for Categories

You can also set a Category base and Tag base at the bottom of the Permalinks settings page. For example, setting the category base to topics would make category URLs look like yourdomain.com/topics/news/.

If you're changing permalinks on an existing site with content already indexed by search engines, consider setting up redirects to avoid broken links. Need help with that? Contact our support team - we're happy to assist.