Friday, November 10, 2006

Post URL (permalink) remains the same even after changing the title and date

Changing the title of the post after the post is published does not change the Permalink

I posted a photo of Malay traditional kite flying in this post: Traditional kite flying in Kelantan, Malaysia (click "BACK" button to get back to this post) for reasons you can find in that post. That was the original title of the post and its individual post URL (permalink) was
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/traditional-
kite-flying-in-kelantan.html.

I then had second thought and think the title is not very appropriate for this blog, and decided to change its title to Photo of traditional kite flying in Kelantan, Malaysia, and had expected the individual post page (permalink) to change, as in Blogger classic to something like this:
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/photo-
traditional-kite-flying-in-kelantan.html.

This would have been a bad thing as existing inbound links may then become dead link, and that post will have to start afresh with search engines. I had a pleasant suprise. Although the title was changed, its URL remained the same, which to me, is a good thing. (you can confirm that by looking at the URL in the address bar in that post or hovering your mouse over the timestamp at the bottom of the post and observing the taskbar or "pop-up" depending on the browser).

Testing to see if changing the date of a published post change the permalink


From this pleasant suprised find, I decided to do another test. Previously, with Blogger classic, if you change the date and/or the post title, the individual post page URL (permalink) will also change (not a good thing). I am posting this at 2:58am, 12/19/06 and will be changing the date the next few days, and again next month (January 2007), to see if this will change the permalink. My expectation is that if I change the date to the another day in the same month, the URL will probably remain the same as it seem to depend on the month (12). When I change the date next month, the individual post page (permalink) will probably change, but in Blogger beta, I hope not. Anyway, we will see in the next few days, and next month.

For the record, after publishing this post, I see that the individual post URL (permalink) is

http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/post-url-
permalink-remains-same-even.html

UPDATE 25 December 2006: Editing this post, clicked on "Post Options" at bottom of post editor, and changed date to 12/25/06. Now let's see what happen to the permalink. After publishing, I found the individual post page (permalink) of this post to be

http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/post-url-
permalink-remains-same-even.html

which is the same as the above. In other words, changing the date to a different day in the same month doesn't change the post URL. Next is to try it next month.

UPDATE 2 January 2007: I am now editing this post and have clicked the Post Options in the lower left corner of the posst editor to change the date from 12/25/06 to 1/2/07 to see if that will change the post URL (permalink) which as stated above is
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/post-url-
permalink-remains-same-even.html. Publishing the post now.

Well, what is the result? Although republishing the post with the date to 1/2/07, the post URL (permalink) remained
http://testing-blogger-beta.blogspot.com/2006/12/post-url-
permalink-remains-same-even.html

This is good news, as when we changed our mind regarding the post title and date, the permalink remain the same, and we can do so without worrying about dead links in search engine result pages and other inbound links. I am going to change the title from "Post URL (permalink) remains the same even after changing the title" to "Post URL (permalink) remains the same even after changing the title and date" to reflect this additional test and can be assured that it will not affect the permalink.

UPDATE: 8 January 2007: Still more test. A reader of my blogs commented at my post How to change the order of the posts. This is his comment: "Thanks Peter, that is the method I am using. The issue is that the post editor seems to ignore any date change I make there. It accepts a new date and time on a post but when 'published' the time and date changes are ignored by blogger." He is referring to the new Blogger (formerly beta) and if I understand him correctly, he is saying that if he edit a post today, but using the POST OPTIONS to change the date, say to November 2006, which will mean that this post will still remain at the top of the main page as new Blogger will ignore the change in the date. That is not what I experience, and if I am correct, and change the date of this post to 11/11/06, this post will no longer be the second post in the main page today, the date at the top will change to 11 November 2006 and the post will end up in the archive and no longer visible in the main page, even though the permalink (individual post page URL) remain the same. I am going to do it now and see what happens.

RESULT: As I expected, this post disappeared from the main page, and ended up in the archives for 2006.

5 comments:

Indeterminacy said...

I just noticed myself that the permalink does not change with changes to the post text. Despite the advantages I prefer the old way, especially since the original post is more like a placeholder for a photo, which then receives a final text a few days later. Is there any way around this?

Manature said...

I am no expert, but I am pretty sure we can't do anything about it as I am fairly confident this is all already set by their program, not in the template. But I think only people from Blogger itself can answer this 100%. Why don't you try to ask this in the Google Blogger Help group and try to catch the attention of Blogger Employee, Blogger Buzz or Blogger Employee Helper.

Peter a.k.a. Enviroman
Enviroman Says

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Unknown said...

nice post