Slugs mode

In Permalink Manager settings you can select how the default permalinks should be generated for new posts and terms.

The “slugs mode” determines how the default permalinks are generated for new content. Afterwards, you can change the permalinks and manually overwrite each of them at any time.

Use native slugs

The native slugs are used by WordPress in posts’ and terms’ original permalinks. They are generated after the post or term is published. Please note that the slug remains unchanged even if you change the post/term title.

Basically, the native slugs are used to identify the posts/terms when they are stored in the database. What is more important, they are also used in the native permalink system. WordPress parses the slug from requested URL and uses it to detect what post/term should be loaded.

In this article you can find more details on what the native slugs are.

In short, when you keep “Use native slugs” mode selected, Permalink Manager will use the same slugs as WordPress does for the default permalinks.

Use actual titles as slugs

Permalink Manager does not rely on the native permalink system. The posts/terms URLs are treated differently. As I mentioned above, WordPress uses the native slug to detect what content should be loaded. Permalink Manager uses the full URL address instead.

This is the major advantage of the plugin. Thanks to this, you can completely customize the full permalinks. Permalink Manager will recognize them as long as they are unique as a whole. It does not matter if they contain the native slugs or not.

It is possible because the plugin stores the full permalinks with their IDs:

Array (
[10] => custom-uri/used-by-a-single-post
[12] => another-custom-uri/used-by-another-single-post
...
[tax-20] => custom-uri/used-by-a-single-term-tag-or-category
[tax-28] => another-custom-term-permalink-example
)

If the permalinks can be completely customized you can make Permalink Manager use the actual titles instead of the native slugs.

In “Use actual titles as slugs” mode, the plugin will automatically use for the default permalink the actual title – “Johnny Doe” (johnny-doe) instead of the native slug (john-doe).

Below you can find a sample example. The the native slug is replaced with actual title not only for the specific page/term but also for its parents (see last column).

This could be also very helpful if you would like to use the same slug in more than one permalink. You can use the same slug more than once, but still you need to make sure that the full URL address is unique.

Inherit parents’ slugs

This mode will be useful, if you would like make the child categories or pages inherit the permalink of their parent after it is manually adjusted.

As you can see on above example, the custom permalink for top-category was changed from: shop/apparel to top-clothes. If inherit parents’ slug mode is enabled, the default permalinks for child categories will be also affected.

Please note that after you change the parent permalink, the children permalinks will not be automatically updated. The new parent permalink will be inherited only by new terms and pages. For example, if you already have a structure of pages in a parent-child relationship and you change the parent’s slug – you will still need to regenerate their permalinks. You can do so in Tools > Permalink Manager > Tools > Regenerate/Reset section.

To prevent this from happening, you need to exclude parents permalinks to make Regenerate/Reset tool ignore them. As shown below, in URI Editor you should select “No (ignore this URI in bulk tools)” option in “Auto-update the URI” option field.