This article explains what happens when WordPress resolves URL request that uses pretty permalinks. This article doesn’t include examples with creating custom permalinks structures. I am planning to have additional articles to cover that.

By default, pretty permalinks are disabled in WordPress. Reason for that is that in some cases they can’t be activated without user intervention. For pretty permalinks to work, WordPress needs access to .htaccess file (if on Apache server) where it needs to add few lines that are base for the rewrite engine in WordPress. And that also requires Apache mod_rewrite module. This module is part of Apache installations and it is very rare that it is missing. Code added into htaccess file basically redirects all URL’s to WordPress index.php and that allows WordPress to break URL into parts and using regular expressions detect what content to display.

WordPress supports also PATHINFO permalinks that don’t require mod_rewrite module, but permalinks in that case must start with index.php. More info on this you can find on the WordPress Codex Permalinks page (links are at the end of this article). There are some setup differences in using permalinks for Apache, IIS or other servers, but they can work with any of the currently available servers for Windows, Linux or MacOS.

So, basic thing to activate rewrite engine in WordPress is to enable permalinks from WordPress Settings/Permalinks panel. If it is set to Default, permalinks are disabled, any other value they are active.

Why do you need these permalinks?

Well, there are many reasons, and most important reasons are SEO and that they look much nicer and user-friendly than long query strings in URL. Especially if you have complex website structure. Search Engine Optimizations benefits from permalinks, because they contain more relevant information about the content, and most search engines have a use for that when indexing websites.

Older versions of WordPress were known to work slower because of some permalinks structures that required additional SQL queries, but since WordPress 3.3 most critical permalinks structures are optimized and there is no performance penalty if you use post name only in the URL. Even with older WordPress versions performance was affected with only some structures and with large number of posts.

Permalinks are a must in a website, and very few WordPress websites don’t use it (mostly default installations, left with permalinks disabled). What to choose for permalinks is another matter.

Default permalinks settings

To quick start using the permalinks, you can select one of the predefined rules from Permalinks panel. Also, you can see Custom Structure field where you can create structure you want. What this panel doesn’t say is that those rules are only for posts (default post type: post). WordPress allows you to customize only this post type rewrite rules, nothing else! Pages in WordPress always use same rewrite structure: only sanitized version of the page name. And, that is the rule you can’t change. For archives, Permalinks panel offers only two settings: what to use as a base for category and tags archives.

Beside this, there are plenty more rewrite rules that WordPress will not allow you to change (well, not directly anyway). These rules include: archives for authors, date base archives, attachments, feeds, custom post types, custom taxonomies and generic archives.

When you create rules on the Permalinks panel, you don’t need to handle regular expressions, but you can use special tags to form the URL. By default, WordPress uses several structure tags (full list in the Codex, check the link at the bottom). If you use these tags in the URL they will be replaced with actual data. If element in the URL is not recognized, it will be left like that as a part of URL. This way you can add static parts of the URL.

Most things in WordPress use more than one rewrite rule. To resolve year based archive, WP needs separate rules to match: basic year archive URL, URL with page numbers and feed URL. Some things need more than 3 rules, for a post you need 5 rules.

Resolving rewrite rules

To resolve URL, WordPress uses a list of rewrite rules. Rules are based on regular expressions, and each regular expression in the list points to a query based URL. For instance, here is the rule to resolve author archive feed:

Regular Expression: author/([^/]+)/feed/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$
WP Resolved Query: index.php?author_name=$matches[1]&feed=$matches[2]

I am not going to go into how regular expressions work, but URL is matched against all regular expressions in the rules list, until we get a match. When URL is matched against expression, query for that expression is than used to resolve requested URL to a query based URL. In the query in example above you see $matches[1] and $matches[2]. These are values detected by regular expression from requested URL. These values are URL parts marked with ‘(‘ and ‘)’ in the regular expression. So, if your URL is this:

http://www.example.com/author/admin/feed/rss/

Website URL part is removed, and we get the request:

author/admin/feed/rss/

This is what WordPress than matches against the rewrite rules, it will match it against our example expression above. Words ‘admin’ and ‘rss’ are matched/extracted from regular expression, they are replacing $matches[1] and $matches[2] and resolved query based URL is now this:

index.php?author_name=admin&feed=rss

And this is something WordPress can use to prepare page, load template and data for it. This final query is used to create WP Query object that is ultimately used to get posts for that request.

If all rewrite rules fail, the last rule will always resolve. This base rule resolves any request to a page request. If that page is not found, you get 404 error. If the URL is resolved by some rewrite rule, and the WordPress Query doesn’t find any results to match, again you will get 404 error.

Custom rewrite rules

If you need to customize URL for posts, you can use Settings Permalinks panel and do it from there. But, anything else you must do it through code. WordPress 3.0 added support for custom post types, and there is one very important thing missing: custom rewrite rules for them. All custom post types by default have same URL structure that includes name for the post type and name for the post. Same thing goes for the archives for the post types, or date base archives. Nothing can be customized without custom coding.

But, there is even more important use for custom permalinks. Each URL is resolved to a query that WordPress uses to get posts. So, date based query and URL filter posts by the date. If you request this:

http://www.example.com/2012/03/

You will get all posts published in the year 2012, in March. And if you want to get all posts belonging to custom post type movie, you can use this:

http://www.example.com/movie/

But, what to do if you want to get all posts for custom post type movie for 2012? You would like it to be this:

http://www.example.com/movie/2012/03/

But, there is no rule for that in WordPress and this will not work, so instead this elegant link you must use only this:

http://www.example.com/movie/?year=2012&monthnum=3

Anything that is part of the URL: resolved by WordPress or added like here with direct query element is used in WordPress Query engine to get posts. There are many examples where additional rewrite rules can make a big difference in getting cleaner links.

Most important thing is filtering posts by post type and taxonomy. Normally, you have URL that filters posts by post type or by taxonomy term. If you want to mix those, you need to use query elements. So, if your movie custom post type has taxonomies category and genre, to filter by both with URL you need to use something like this:

http://www.example.com/movie/?cat=short&genre=animated

But, what if you can do it like this:

http://www.example.com/movie/short/animated/

That would be great, and if you have more taxonomies you can have more terms listed like this, one term for each taxonomy. But, again, this can’t be done without using custom coding to implement additional rewrite rules and you can’t use such links…

GD Custom Posts and Taxonomies Tools Pro

…Oh wait, you can!

Ever since custom post types are added to WordPress, I used them for many things, and I always hated limitations with permalinks. So, I started adding customized rewrite rules with my GD Custom Posts and Taxonomies Tools Pro plugin. Plugin now allows fully customized single post permalinks for custom post types (just like for default posts), date based archives for custom post types and archives with intersection of custom post types and taxonomies. All that without any additional coding, just by setting rules for each custom post type you add through this plugin.

Check out this tutorial with examples to see what can be done with this plugin and custom post types. All this is used on Dev4Press for Central Documentation and Feature of Day sections to filter posts by terms. I have few more ideas for additional rewrite rules and more customizable links structure.

Canonical Redirect

This is very interesting and useful (usually) feature. Sometimes, WordPress can partially match the URL depending on the rule. Than, it will find what URL should resolve to, and than generate proper URL for it, and redirect to it. So, you request one URL, and that gets replaced with some other URL. If you use category taxonomy in the URL, with hierarchy ending with post name like this:

http://www.example/parent-category/child-category/post-name/

If you make this request:

http://www.example/parent-category/post-name/

WordPress will find the post it needs, and than will determine that URL is not canonical as the rewrite rules require it to be, it will than generate full URL and redirect to it. But, if you don’t want this to happen, or you have additional rewrite rules for the post, canonical redirect will ignore all that and will redirect to URL it decides is correct. In that case, you must disable canonical redirect. To do that, you can use this PHP code:

remove_filter('template_redirect', 'redirect_canonical');

Conclusion

Handling custom rewrite rules is not easy, and very often you will run into conflicts. If you try to use same regular expression for your rule, you will remove default rule that was using same expression, and that will most likely break something. When working with rules, it is useful to have list of all rules in the system. You can see this list with GD Press Tools Pro debugger, or you can use few functions (check the debug rewrite rules tutorial, link at the bottom).

WordPress rewriter is very powerful, but by default it uses only a fraction of what it can do, since only basic rules are implemented, and if you need more, you must write code for that. The goal was to keep things simple in the core, and to allow freedom to customize things if needed. Not everyone will need so complex rewrite rules, and basic ones are enough. If you need more, you need to dig deeper or to use specialized plugins to achieve that.

1. Improvements to backup and restore. New set of backup features will include adding sites from backup into multisite network, and will allow you to export site from network into a standalone website. Restore script will be improved, and parts of it will be added into main plugin code to allow for adding sites into multisite network.
2. More HTACCESS tweaks. There are number of new tweaks and options related to HTACCESS that will be added to help with the website security. The list of these tweaks is not yet finalized.
3. Expanded comment SPAM features. This is still not finalized, but I have several ideas on how to improve security with improvements to SPAM detection. Few methods will be available and they should be as automated as possible to reduce the need for moderation.
4. Logging actions into database. Set of features that logs the users activity on the website will include a wide range of interactions like profile changes, activities defined by plugins through filters and functions use.
5. Full set of SEO features. Powerful SEO module is coming, with options to control titles, meta tags and descriptions for all sorts of pages on your website.
6. Dynamic XML Sitemaps. Right now sitemaps are generated as static XML files. But, in multisite environment, this is not a good method to use considering how many files you will need to keep. New method will allow to generate sitemaps through WordPress with method similar to feeds.

As I said, this is preliminary list, and more minor features will be added to 4.5. If you have any suggestions, please let me know through comments here or in the support forum. GD Press Tools Pro 4.5 will go into development in late March, and is expected in May or June 2012.

Some of the plugin features will not be usable and controlled for network mode for whole network and individual websites. This means that: Admin Bar, SMTP, Maintenance Mode and Debugger will be both site and network modules. Sitemap Generator and SEO will be site only modules. Settings saving will be changed, plugin loading optimized and new modules based core structure improved. With these changes whole network can be put under maintenance mode, individual sites in the network can control SMTP settings and debugger.

Other changes will include: Cron panel can show source for the jobs, main tracker (used by debugger) can be load from the wp-config.php, database panel takes into account table engine, and plugin can take into account differences between MyISAM and InnoDB engines. As for the fixes, minor network problems are taken care of, minor problems with FaceBook image meta tag with some themes.

In continuation of adding SEO features, support for robots meta tags is expanded with custom post types and custom taxonomies. Also, 3 more robots meta tags are added, specific to Google search engine, bringing total of supported robot tags to 11.

New plugin version will be released on November 28 2011.

Cleanup Tools

New minor revision of GD Press Tools Pro brings some bugs fixed and several new features as well: centralized cleanup tools and many updates to plugins admin bar options to include quick tools operations and improvements to existing comments cleanup operations.

Plugin Tools panel now has a new tab for cleanup. Some operations there were already in the plugin in the dashboard widget, but there are many more new ones, that you will not need to run very often. Panel uses AJAX to execute cleanup, and you will get a report after process is done. Results of the cleanup (with all options used) is on the image bellow.

Cleanup Report

Adminbar plugin menu is expanded with Quick Tools. Right now it has options to control maintenance mode and to clear WordPress rewrite rules. Cleanup options for comments are updated and now include commentmeta table. Saving SEO meta robots settings is also fixed.

As always, please report any bugs you find in the forums, and I will get on fixing it.

Links and Resources

Here is the list of tutorials that you might find useful:

How to backup and restore your website
Using GD Press Tools 4.2 Backup
Using GD Press Tools Auto Tagger

Comparing GD Press Tools Pro versus BackupBuddy:

GD Press Tools Pro versus BackupBuddy

To see the list of plugin features, overview and to buy the plugin, visit these pages:

GD Press Tools Overview
GD Press Tools Main Page
GD Press Tools Frequently Asked Questions
Buy GD Press Tools Pro

Page tag for the meta elements rendering was broken, and some post type related functions were missing. That is fixed now. Meta box for posts belonging to custom post types is added. Support for archives for custom post types is also included.

Initial release post:
http://www.dev4press.com/2010/blog/development/modded-plugin-headspace2/
gdHeadspace4:
http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-headspace4/
Original Headspace2:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/headspace2/

First two partial translations are included for Serbian and Norwegian languages. Hopefully, these two will be 100% translated by next version, and that more will come soon. As for the bugs, there were several small visual issues, missing translation strings, problem with creating protective index.php for backup folder, some deprecated functions use. All these are fixed in the 4.0.8.

I will soon announce plans for two next major revisions: 4.1 and 4.2. There are a lot of features on the list, so some things need to be prioritized. Most important changes to come are: SEO module, improved backup, restore backups script, actions logging, improved posts views statistics and updates to file manager. All suggestions are welcome.

GD Press Tools 4.0 Pro: http://www.dev4press.com/gd-press-tools/

Admin Bar Controls

For both global settings (multisite) and normal settings you can set which user roles will be able to see the admin bar. You have it on the image on the right. Additional filter is added to documentation, so check it out there, it’s quite simple.

Pinning posts to dashboard is improved for full custom post types support and it’s now using only one dashboard widget for all types. Numerous fixes are included for pins code.

Other fixes include file system backup initialization procedure changes to fix the issue with overlapping exclusions in multi tasks backups and problem with metabox sitemap initialization before it’s used first. Still, please test backup with some more complex tasks to see if this change did the trick.

GD Press Tools 4.0.6/4.0.7 should get few more changes and improvements for generating sitemaps in multisite environment and first round of improvements to backup. Brand new SEO module coming in 4.1.

GD Press Tools 4.0 Pro: http://www.dev4press.com/gd-press-tools/

Metabox

For each content sitemap type you can use numerical priorities and calculated ones. Calculations can be done differently depending on the content type: using comments count, using posts counts, using date ranges. Also, for each link added to sitemap, filter now allows overriding url, last modification date, priority and frequency allowing for fine tuning of each link. Also, meta box for each post shows XML Sitemap options: to exclude post or set override priority. Override priority will be used regardless of global priority set for that post type.

Disable admin bar option works again. Other fixed bugs include single post auto tagger retrieval, and some sitemap initialization problems with duplicated options loading.

GD Press Tools 4.0.5 or 4.0.6 should get few more changes and improvements for generating sitemaps in multisite environment. After that there will be more improvements to backup and brand new SEO module coming in 4.1.

GD Press Tools 4.0 Pro: http://www.dev4press.com/gd-press-tools/

Sitemap Exclusions and Extra Links

Brand new version, GD Press Tools 4.0.3 Pro, brings many improvements to XML Sitemap Generator (exclusions of posts and terms and extra links list), improved plugin front page boxes, added more descriptions to some of the options and fixes several bugs.

New Extras & Exclusions tab is on the image on the right. So, you have list of additional links to be added to sitemap. They will go into Core sitemap file, and you have new entry added to the Content Settings panel for these links.

Exclusions of posts can be done by post ID, and all post types are supported. You can exclude posts belonging to terms for any taxonomy. But, if you use WP 3.0, only categories and post tags will be used, for all the taxonomies you need WP 3.1. You can also exclude terms links from taxonomy archives sitemaps, for each taxonomy individually.

Also, now you can see the sitemap status on plugin front page. Cron jobs counts are also displayed there with few more quick links to different plugin panels.

Bugs fixed in this version include: adding attachments to sitemap wasn’t working, date archive splitting wasn’t working as expected, renaming admin username failing in some cases and few other minor problems.

Next version will add more XML Sitemap Generator changes that include priorities calculations for links added to sitemaps and post exclusion controls on the post edit panel. 4.0.5 or 4.0.6 should see few more changes and improvements for generating sitemaps in multisite environment. After that there will be more improvements to backup and brand new SEO module coming in 4.1.

GD Press Tools 4.0 Pro: http://www.dev4press.com/gd-press-tools/

WordPress Top Plugins on Packt Publishing Website.

WordPress Top Plugins

Book Contents

First chapter deals with plugin basics including searching for and installing the plugins from WordPress.org plugins repository both auto install through WordPress interface and manual installing over FTP. This is followed by information on updating the plugins and troubleshooting common problems.

Plugins are divided into chapters according to plugins category and usage. First category is for content generating plugins and it starts with my own GD Star Rating plugin and some practical advises on changing thumb/star rating display. Gallery, tags, and other content plugins, forms and content scrappers are part of this chapter.

Next two chapters are for sharing content and style plugins, and here I have found several great plugins I never tried before. Overall, very good choice of plugins. Next chapter focuses on BuddyPress: setting the plugin, specific themes and plugins.

E-commerce plugins are next, followed by user related plugins. Security, maintenance and administration plugins end this book.

Verdict

For the most part, choice of plugins is good, and as I said, I have found myself several plugin new too me that I will surely try and use in my projects. Content for each plugin ranges from simple description to solutions for some common problems with that specific plugin. This is really handy for some complex plugins like CForms or some of the e-commerce solutions.

All plugins in the book are free, no premium/commercial plugins are included, and that is the something that such book really needs. Also, there are no SEO plugins in the book, and that is really strange decision not to include them. Last chapters on maintenance and security are missing some important plugins and on the other hand included are plugins that don’t even work with most WordPress versions, and are long time outdate. My own GD Press Tools Lite plugin is missing, and compared to most other plugins included, it’s much easier to use and more powerful.

But, even with the few problems, this is very useful book for WordPress beginners and even experienced users can find it interesting and find some interesting plugins inside.

Buy the book

You can get both PDF and print edition of this book from Packt directly, or you can buy print edition from the Amazon.

Win a free copy of this book

I would like to say thanks to Packt Publishing for providing me with a copy of this book for this review, and also giving one more copy of the book for one lucky reader. Starting today, for the next 10 days you have a chance to win this book by leaving a comment or sending the tweet about this review. On Monday, January 24 at 14:00 CET I will announce the winner that will be picked up randomly from all comments and tweets:

1. Leave a comment here and talk about jQuery, or
2. Tweet about this review follow and include @milangd in the tweet

Lucky winner is getting PDF version WordPress Top Plugins from Packt Publishing.

Giveaway completed

Winner of PDF version of the book WordPress Top Plugins is @NiceThai. Congratulations!

To avoid confusion with original plugin, my version is renamed to gdHeadSpace4. You can find it on the Free Downloads page, in the modded plugins section. New home page for this plugin is at the bottom of this post.

Plugin has a lot of differences from original. I removed some of the features because they were conflicted with some of my plugins (tags on the post edit panels and few other things). Plugin panels are a bit reorganized, icons changed, annoying support pages removed. Also, I removed annoying comments with license on top of each file, changed code layout to better fit to my editor (NetBeans). Several other obsolete modules, code that was causing problem on dashboard is also removed.

There are some new tags to be used for SEO elements, custom post types and custom taxonomies supported properly, I added filters allowing expanding of tags with custom tags. More changes will come as I need the make changes or find more problems. This is plugin version I am developing for myself, and I will not take ‘features requests’, but I will improve plugin from time to time and make it compatible with both WordPress and my plugins. If you find this version useful, please use it, if not try original version or some other SEO plugin.

Please, test new features and report problems in the forum or in comments.

gdHeadspace4:
http://www.dev4press.com/plugins/gd-headspace4/
Original Headspace2:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/headspace2/

Here is the list of features in xScape theme framework that will be part of the initial 1.0.0 release. Features marked as PRO will not be available with free themes:

• Settings panels: for theme and framework settings, ajax powered and easy to use
• Basic Tools panel: clear cached data, export and import of settings,
• PRO: Extra Tools panel: existing images custom fields conversion
• PRO: Layouts panel: advanced management for theme templates and sidebars
• Menus panel: advanced menu designer with many customization options
• SEO controls: search engine optimization for titles, meta tags and much more
• GD Star Rating: direct integration for standard and multi ratings into comments for review websites
• jQuery powered: breadcrumbs, comments forms validation, contact form, featured posts slider
• Visual elements: paged navigation for posts and comments, author and related posts blocks
• WP Integration: post and page panel integration for additional options and images upload
• Custom Taxonomies: template support with page integration and navigation
• Extra Templates: twitter statuses, archives and website site-map
• Actions & Filters: expanding theme using actions and filters, same way the WordPress works

Additional elements included with framework include widgets and modules. Modules are similar to WordPress plugins, but integrated into the theme with own settings and controls:

• Widgets: Flickr, Twitter, Recent Posts, Single Ad, Networks Social Links
• PRO: Modules: Share This (Submit to social websites), Translate This (Google Translate support)

As for the requirements, theme will require PHP5, and will work with different versions of WordPress:

• WordPress 2.8.x
• WordPress 2.9.x
• WordPressMU 2.9.x
• WordPress 3

Free themes will have no support (apart from reporting and fixing bugs and access to some basic tutorials). Pro themes will be sold for one time fee that will include premium support (forum, premium tutorials), critical and regular updates.

For Pro theme, there will be two different editions: Standard and Developer. Developer edition will include Photoshop PSD files and 2 email support tickets. Single Pro theme will cost 35 EUR (46 USD) for Standard edition and 55 EUR (75 USD) for Developer edition. When you purchase 3 same editions themes, you get one additional theme for free. Once the number of themes is increased, we will offer subscription based model (both standard and developer) to cover all themes and add some additional support elements like SVN access and more email support tickets.

In the next 24 hours, GD Star Rating website will be the first website to get new baseScape theme. By the end of this week, WPMU website will be activated on xscape.info domain where everyone can sign up for a 24 hours blog that will allow you to test drive each theme before deciding if you want to buy it.

Stay tuned and feel free to ask anything you want to know more. xScape will be unleashed very soon…