How to fix broken links and missing pages in WordPress by resetting permalinks

The permalink structure can get lost sometimes

Sometimes the link structure on your WordPress needs a jumpstart.  After deploying your site, installing new features or just plain high volume day to day operation your links may have moved to places where they don’t belong. If you are seeing unexpected 404 pages, for example with redirection after successful payments in WooCommerce, try resetting your permalinks like so:

Reset permalinks manually

1. Make a full backup, before you do anything.
2. Go to General > Permalinks
3. Whatever your settings are, select a different permalink option and hit Save. Be careful: if you have a custom option, you must save the info entered there manually. It will be gone if you save different options.
4. After they have successfully changed, revert to your old settings and hit Save again.This rewrites the permalink structure to your database, eliminating corrupt or faulty entries in the process.

Here is a quick screencast illustrating the process:

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Too small? View in full size.

Permalink management plugins

Furthermore there are of course plugins to help you manage your permalinks:

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/regenerate-post-permalinks/ – can help you to regenerate all your permalinks based on the post titles.

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-permalinks/ –

  Set custom permalinks on a per-post, per-tag or per-category basis.

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/permalink-manager/ – allows you to control how the permalinks for custom post types are created & regenerate them.

• https://wordpress.org/plugins/change-permalink-helper/ – checks the Permalink and redirects to the new URL, if it doesn’t exist. It sends the header message “moved permanently 301”

Happy permalink regenerating!