I made a site some time ago and after some days some posts were indexed by search engines. Today I changed the permalink structure from /%postname%/
to /%category%/%postname%/
.
After that, when people come to my site from search engines a 404 page not found error
appears. I want to change all old URLs to the new category base URL without any 404 error.
How can I do it?
By the way, I use Yoast plugin.
That happens because WordPress reads your old post name as category name now – and it cannot find that category.
Solution: filter 404_template
and try to find the post and its permalink. Then redirect.
<?php # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
/* Plugin Name: Redirect to category */
add_filter( '404_template', 't5_redirect_to_category' );
function t5_redirect_to_category( $template )
{
if ( ! is_404() )
return $template;
global $wp_rewrite, $wp_query;
if ( '/%category%/%postname%/' !== $wp_rewrite->permalink_structure )
return $template;
if ( ! $post = get_page_by_path( $wp_query->query['category_name'], OBJECT, 'post' ) )
return $template;
$permalink = get_permalink( $post->ID );
wp_redirect( $permalink, 301 );
exit;
}