WordPress Tip #5 – Choose which category goes in your permalink

We recently discovered the solution to a problem we had been having with the permalink structure for posts belonging to more than one category.

Our permalink structure for posts contains the category name, followed by the post name. The problem is, if the post is in more than one category, which category is used in the permalink?

Let’s say we wrote an article about WordPress, which was also related to copy writing, so we assign the post to both the WordPress and Copy Writing categories.

However, the main focus of the article is WordPress, so that is the category that we want to have in the permalink, but by default, WordPress will use the category with the lowest numerical ID (i.e. the category that was created first) in the permalink. So if we had created the Copy Writing category before the WordPress category (which we did, as it happens), it would automatically stick ‘copywriting’ in the URL, instead of ‘wordpress’.

What we need is a way to choose which category goes in the permalink. Enter Hikari! (British music fans will see what I did there)

The Hikari Category Permalink plugin lets you do exactly that. Write your post, and select your categories as usual, but now when you hover over a category name, a ‘Permalink’ link will appear. Click this, and the category name will turn bold, indicating that this category will be used in the permalink. You have complete control!

Use the Hikari plugin to choose which category goes in your permalink

Hikari has a whole bunch of other useful-looking plugins, which I’ll be checking out soon. Just search for Hikari in the ‘Add Plugins’ panel.