Fixing Dangerous Permalink Redirect Bugs

November 16, 2007

Since I have more than one occasion encounter bug with Permalink Redirect, I recommend people wait for new version of this plug-in.

The Bugs

The following are the bugs:

1. Redirect "/feed" URI to "/feed/" using 302 redirect. Ignoring the "/%postname%" rule having no trailing slash.
2. Redirect "/?paged=x" to "/page/x/" (where x is paging number) ingoring the fact ugly default URL is used, causing 404 message when paging.

There is no doubt about these bugs, because I test it by enabling and disabling Permalink Redirect plugin.

Fixing the bugs

Indeed being a programmer gives me some advantages, I could fix the bugs on the fly.

Feed redirect trailing slash

For the /feed to /feed/ redirect problem, I found these lines:

208 if (is_feed()) {
209 $link = trailingslashit($link) . 'feed/';
210 }

Solution:

1. If want no trailing slash, remove the "/" on line 209.
2. If it's WordPress 2.3.1+ simply remove the 3 lines because it's built-in.
3. If you don't want to touch code, include the following in the Options > Permalink Redirect > Paths to be skipped: ".+/feed.*" (without the quotes)

Page redirect ignoring permalink rule

For the /?page=x to /paged/x/ problem, I found this line:

204 if ($paged)
205 $link = trailingslashit($link) . "page/$paged/";

Solution:

1. If WordPress 2.3.1+, remove the lines because it's done better.
2. If you don't want to touch code, include the following in the Options > Permalink Redirect > Paths to be skipped: ".+/?paged=.*" (without the quotes)

Conclusion

Even being buggy, and not recommended by WordPress 2.3.1 which claim having internal redirect, Permalink Redirect still provide some benefit that built-in redirect doesn't offer, such as:

1. Redirect permalink from old structure to new structure
2. Redirect broken, or wrong URL, providing the post id is correct, or enough matching words in post slug.
3. Redirect feed url from "/?feed=rss" to "/feed" or "/feed/" depending your customization.

This plug-in is indeed getting a lot of my attention. I have more liking for it than the bult-in redirect. So, whenever I have time I will investigate deeper into the code and optimize it for better usage.

Tags: Plugin, url