I’ve used %postname% since I started – Can I ask why you suggest adding a .php or .html as well?

I see that you are using the:

http://chadgramling.com/wordup/?p=219

permalink. Are you wanting to change that to something different? If so, its not too hard to do.

One of the most common reasons why people DON’T change their permalink structure later in the game, is for the fact that they don’t want to create a ton of 404’s and also lose traffic in the SERPs.

Mod Rewrite is a solution for this. However, you are lucky!!! Very lucky…

You can change you blog gets a freebie… you can feel free to change you permalink structure right now and not worry about creating 404’s.

The reason why is because your current permalink structure is this:

?p=id#

and no matter what anyone has for their permalink structure, you can ALWAYS call a post url by its ID#.

Example: Lets look this post… this post url is:

http://blogaboutyourblog.com/2007/07/04/how-to-blow-up-your-blog-and-live-to-blog-about-it/

BUT!!! it is also post ID#535. So, consequently, even though Matt has be permalink structure set to /year/month/day/post-title/ I can easily call on this post page by doing this:

http://blogaboutyourblog.com/?p=535

and it works just fine!

So, again… you get a ONE TIME free ticket to change your permalink structure without fear of causing a bunch of 404’s and loosing traffic or even having to hassle with Mod Rewrite!

In my experience, this permalink structure works best:

/post-title.html
or
/post-title.php

if you want your permalink structure to look like Matt’s. (not recommended.. sorry Matt, we’ll fix that)

Type this:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

If your permallink structure to look like this:

yourname.com/category-name/post-name/

type this:

/%category%/%postname%/

yourname.com/category-name/post-name.php
*or post-name.html, etc…

type this:

/%category%/%postname%.php
* or post-name.html, etc…

However for SEO, categories, archive pages, etc… are useless and actually lessen your indexing ability.

I strongly recommend using:

/%postname%.html or
/%postname%.php

YourName.com/Post-Title.html

This will give you some kick ass indexing.

I will get into robots.txt later… but long story short… you want to SHUT the doors to all sections of your site other than you home page and your individual post pages…

Cats, Archs, Tags, etc… are to make the navigational experience for the user better… when you get crawlers in there, it just murks up how your posts get indexed.

I started thinking about my permalink structure because mine is numeric rather than putting the title into the link.

Like I said, I’ll revisit your tip at some point and heck, my blog is now better off after having blown it up! Doesn’t usually work that way.

Those deadly tips will come shortly!

Next time you have trouble… look for me online, or drop me an IM and I will be happy to help.