Are You A Slug … User? New Way To Manage WordPress Slugs

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Do you manage your Slugs? Or do you let WordPress build your Page Slug for you? Have you upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and wondered what happened to Page and Post Slugs?

With the latest WordPress 2.5 upgrade there is no way to set your Page or Post Slug while in the Write mode. I believe this is a critical oversight on the part of the development team. Yes, newbies don’t understand it and probably would never use it, but anyone who is a serious blog developer knows the value of using Page and Post Slugs.

I could write a lengthy article on using WordPress Slugs, but I know that Michael Gray, from GrayWolf’s SEO Blog, has a fantastic article on Optimizing WordPress Page Titles, Post Titles and Page Slugs. It will give you an excellent understanding of the importance of creating your own Page or Post Slugs in WordPress and how it can impact your SEO.

Hopefully, you read GrayWolf’s article and are ready to change your Post and Page Slugs. How? Here’s the bit of pain… you have to add an extra step in your article writing process and why I think this was a critical oversight. See what happens when you are in a hurry to get an article out-the-door … Over the past week I have been creating a new theme for SuperiorBlogs.com and testing it with WordPress version 2.5 and in my haste to multitask, I did not notice that Slugs are still a part of the Write process, albeit different than past versions.

In order to manage your WordPress Slugs you have to open your new post or page after publishing (or saving) it via the Manage section of your admin panel. As shown, you will find a Permalink setting just under the Title. Click on the edit link and put your SEO skills to work creating your unique WordPress Slug. When you type in your Post Title and tab down to the write window, you will notice that your Permalink located just below the title (see the image) will update to the Title you just input, assuming you are using pretty permalinks (we use /%postname%/).

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