Do you want to remove the date from your WordPress URLs?
WordPress comes with an SEO friendly URL structure. This includes several link formats, including one that adds dates to your WordPress post URLs.
In this article, we're going to show you how to easily remove date from your WordPress URLs.
But before, if you have never installed WordPress discover How to Install a WordPress Blog in 7 Steps et How to search, install and activate a WordPress theme on your blog
Then back to why we are here.
Why do dates appear in WordPress URLs?
By default WordPress uses a non-human readable link structure for post and page URLs that looks like this:
https://example.com/?p=123
It uses the post ID in the URL which doesn't look very nice or meaningful.
However, WordPress allows you to easily change that to more meaningful and SEO-friendly URLs. It gives you a bunch of options to choose from on Settings»Permalinks.
Choosing the “Month & Title” or “Day & Title” options will add the date settings to your WordPress URLs. They will then look like this:
Date and title of publication: https://example.com/2020/09/03/title-publication/ month et publication title: https://example.com/2020/09/title-publication/
These URLs are better than the default URLs. They are still great for SEO. However, they are unnecessarily long and the dates make your articles look old.
This is why many users switch to the URL structure 'Tpublication title'which will remove the date and simply use the keywords from the slug in the URL.
Title of the publication : https://example.com/title-publication/
It's shorter, meaningful, SEO friendly, and doesn't look dated.
Things to consider before removing date from WordPress URLs
If you start a new WordPress blog and haven't launched it yet, then it's best to remove the date from WordPress URLs.
However, if your website has been running for a while then you will need to keep the following things in mind.
Changing the URL structure can cause 404 errors for your users and your search engines. This means that you will be able to see warnings and errors appearing in Google Search Console reports.
Your search engine rankings may also be affected because linking from your old articles will now lead to 404 errors.
Both of these issues can be fixed by setting up redirects, and we'll show you how to do that later in this article.
Changing the URL structure also resets the number of shares on social networks. Unfortunately, most social share counting services don't track redirected URLs and reset the share count for them.
Removing the date from WordPress URLs
First, you need to create a WordPress backup complete your website. This will allow you to restore the latter to an earlier stage in case things don't work out as you expect.
After that, you must visit the page Settings »Permalinks and choose 'Title of the publication'as the structure of the permalink.
Do not forget to click on the button « Save Changes To save your changes.
WordPress will remove the date from your WordPress URLs and start using the URL structure based on the post title.
Setting up redirects to preserve SEO rankings
Now that you've removed the date from your WordPress URLs. You need to configure the correct redirects.
The redirects send users to the updated URLs without displaying a 404 error. This will also help search engines understand that the old URLs are now being moved to these new URLs.
First of all, you need to install and activate the plugin Redirection. For more details, see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
When activating, you must visit the page Tools »Redirection and click on the button " Start configuration».
The plugin will then show you some options. It can automatically detect and alert if a post URL changes and keep a log of redirects. You can also leave these two options unchecked and just click on the 'Continue configuration'.
The plugin will then run some tests and if everything looks good then you can finish the setup. After that, it will store the plugin settings in the WordPress database.
When done, you will see the plugin settings page. From there, you need to click on the " Add a redirect " up.
You will see a form with the Source and Target URL fields. 'Source URL' is the field where you will describe your old URL structure and 'Target URL' is the location of the new URL.
If you were using the "publication day and title" URLs, enter the following values in the source and target fields:
source: / (d *) / (d *) / (d *) / ([A-Za-z0-9- *])
Target: / $ 4
If you used the "Post month and title" URLs, you would enter the following values:
source: / (d *) / (d *) / ([A-Za-z0-9- *]) Target: / $ 3
Remember to select Regex and click on the "Add a redirect To save your changes.
The plugin will now redirect users to your new URLs based on the post title.
Also discover some additional premium WordPress plugins
You can use other plugins to display countdowns on your WordPress blog. In what follows, I offer you some of them.
1. Was this Helpful
Was This Helpful is a WordPress Plugin premium used to value the comments of your readers. It should be noted that if a positive comment motivates you to do better, a negative comment on the other hand helps you to find the shortcomings, and to improve your blog; making it more useful for other visitors.
This plugin is unique because it asks visitors to answer the question of why they don't find a post useful when they click the "NO" option. Likewise, it asks visitors what they like the most when they click on the "YES" option.
Discover How to use social networks to boost engagement on your blog
Additionally, you can go to the page/post listing where you will see a Yes/No section, which allows you to quickly see the statistics, finally to have a complete overview of the quality of your articles and your pages.
Download | Demo | Web hosting
2. CommentPress
CommentPress is a powerful and compact premium WordPress plugin that allows you to insert, edit and delete comments quickly and easily. CommentPress uses Ajax, jQuery and PHP to give visitors the possibility to insert comments without having to reload the page.
This plugin has many customization options, finally giving it the look and appearance you want. It has a captcha to block spam and brings more security to your comment section.
Read also our article on How content marketing affects the SEO of your blog
Its main features are: the easy insertion of comments, the possibility for users to reply to specific comments, the pagination of comments, complete management of the administration of the comments section, buttons for easy insertion of images, videos and links, a fully responsive layout, a Captcha to secure the form and avoid spam, and much more.
Download | Demo | Web hosting
3. WordPress Multisite Shared Media
If you have multiple websites, you will likely have all the sites in your network interconnected. The plugin " WordPress Multisite Shared Media Is a new interesting plugin developed for this purpose.
This plugin allows you to share your images between all your connected sites. In fact, it applies to anything uploaded to the WordPress media library.
All you have to do is download a media file, once, and you can access it from any of your other sites. It can be a real time saver if you reuse your images on all your websites.
Download | Demo | Web hosting
Recommended Resources
Find out about other recommended resources to help you build and manage your website.
- How to password protect your WordPress forms
- How to compress and resize images on WordPress
- 5 WordPress plugins allow users to publish content
- Common mistakes when building a multilingual WordPress website
Conclusion
Here is ! We hope this article has helped you learn how to remove date from WordPress URLs easily. You can also see our guide on Common WordPress multilingual website building mistakes and how to correct them.
However, you will also be able to consult our resources, if you need more elements to carry out your projects of creation of Internet sites, by consulting our guide on the WordPress blog creation.
Feel free to share this article with your friends on your favorite social networks. But, in the meantime, tell us about your Comments and suggestions in the dedicated section.
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