Redirecting WordPress ‘numeric’ permalinks

When I set up my blog, I configured it to use the ‘numeric’ permalinks that look something like http://www.brandonchecketts.com/archives/61

Of course, that is pretty straightforward, but it isn’t very readable, and we can probably get a few extra SEO points by putting the post’s title in the URL. However, just changing the permalink format is a bad idea since I have a bunch (okay, a few) incoming links that I don’t necessarily want to break.

So, I wrote a quick WordPress Plugin that redirects these old numeric links to my new format. Simply create a file named ‘numeric_permalink_redirect.php’ in your wp-content/plugins directory with this content:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: BC Rewriter
Plugin URI: http://www.brandonchecketts.com/
Description: Redirect old requests to new permalink format
Author: Brandon Checketts
Version: 1.5
Author URI: http://www.brandonchecketts.com/
*/

// redirect old "numeric" type archives to our current permalin structure
function check_numeric_permalink()
{
  if(preg_match("/^/archives/([0-9]+)/", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], $matches)) {
  $post_id = $matches[1];
  $url = get_permalink($post_id);
  header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
  header("Location: $url");
  exit;
}

add_action('init', 'check_numeric_permalink');

?>

That will now do a 301 Permanent redirect to the new URL so that you shouldn’t lose anybody, and the search engines should change their incoming links.