Permalink structure reflecting category name (event, venue, organiser)

[akalwp]

Hi,
thank for this plugin & pro version. I like the way you did it and the ability to customize it.
But I’m not comfortable with the permalink structure specially with categories (event, venues & organizer)

Right now, the event permalink is like : mysite.com/event/event-name
And I can also find the event under :
mysite.com/event/category/category-name/event-name
and venue under : mysite.com/venue/category/category-name/venue-name (but there is an auto redirection, sadly…)

I wouldn’t keep 2 different slugs for the same element :
mysite.com/event/event-name/
and
mysite.com/event/category/category-name/event-name/
(idem for venue and organiser)
this is bad regarding to my SEO strategy (I’m not here to debate about best SEO practices). I would like all links related to Event Calendar (event, venue, organiser) are displayed like :

mysite.com/event/category/category-name/event-name/
mysite.com/venue/category/category-name/venue-name/
mysite.com/organizer/category/category-name/organizer-name/

This is really important for me to organise my content using categories and have them appearing in the permalink

By the way, even I know the question was asked dozen times, why does /category/ appears into the url ? is that really impossible to remove (and not rename) this part of the url ???

I hope I’m clear enough and you’ll be able to handle this situation.

Best Regards
Akal

[Brook]

Howdy Akal,

I am very happy to hear you enjoy the plugin. I would love to assist you here.

To be honest and up front, I would strongly advise you not to mess with the permalink structure and just leave it be. This is a very dangerous and difficult thing to do. It is prone to breakage when you update the plugins, and will likely take a lot of effort and time to resolve all of the bugs introduced with your new permalink structure.

All that said you can do this due to how WP Rewrites works. They are a powerful tool that is very dangerous or problematic to use. You or your website developer should be able to modify the rewrites in the typical fashion using the rewrites API. Just budget a lot of dev and testing time, plus a little each time you update plugins.

Does that all make sense? Will that work for you? Please let me know.

Cheers!

– Brook

[Brook]

By the way, even I know the question was asked dozen times, why does /category/ appears into the url ? is that really impossible to remove (and not rename) this part of the url ???

I forgot to respond to this. That is because it needs to be in the URL for WordPress to work in all scenarios. This is part of the danger/issues with URL structures, often times your desired structure just isn’t advisable. Sometimes it’s downright impossible. A seasoned web developer will be able to help you choose this, any one familiar with WP Rewrites. But again, budget a decent amount of time for this if you choose to go ahead and hire one.

Cheers!

– Brook

[akalwp]

Hi,

I will not change anything, that’s why I’m asking for.

This plugin does not follow the WP core logic and this is a pity. It’s not about what I would like, but what it should be. The genetic of wordpress is to organise content under categories, things are clear and logical : home/cat/sub-cat/post. With that it’s easy to follow a SEO silo organization. You know, organise content, not throw it in an “/event/” catch-all.

By the way, the /category/ slug of WP can be easily hidden from url with Yoast SEO so let’s dream and hope that maybe, the Tribe team could do something similar for dozen of people that asked for since many years now… and because this plugin is expensive, yes, I hope something, but after reading hundred topics from this forum, I understand and know I should not dream.

Thank for taking time reading, trying to explain how much it would be expensive and dangerous to make this plugin working as it should.

Regards
Akal

[Brook]

I am truly sorry you are disappointed Akal. Perhaps it might help if I elaborated a little bit.

Right now, the event permalink is like : mysite.com/event/event-name
And I can also find the event under :
mysite.com/event/category/category-name/event-name
and venue under : mysite.com/venue/category/category-name/venue-name (but there is an auto redirection, sadly…)

I wouldn’t keep 2 different slugs for the same element :
mysite.com/event/event-name/
and
mysite.com/event/category/category-name/event-name/
(idem for venue and organiser)

First I would like to point out that we do follow the WordPress norm here. In fact our URLs are added by WordPress itself. But there are some common misunderstandings out there about how WordPress works. When you add a post type to WordPress it generates a post type archive URL for you, in our case it generates: /event/. WordPress will then add any posts you make directly under that URL: /event/slug . We’re not even throwing “it in an “/event/” catch-all”. WordPress is and it does with very good reason.

WordPress also has archive and taxonomy views. For instance by default WordPress has the /tag/ and /category/ archive views. So if you make a blog post on your site with a tag and a category that post will appear in three places: /tag/tag-name/, /category/cat-name/ and on your blog page which might be something like /blog/. For events there are more taxonomy types: Venues, Organizers, plus tags and categories. So yes any event you add with one of those taxonomy types will appear on each taxonomy archive page. That’s up to five places. WordPress puts them there, and it does so for a few reasons but one of them is that it can help SEO spidering. If we were to remove an event listing from this page we would be violating the WordPress norm, and that is something we’re not going to purposefully do.

this is bad regarding to my SEO strategy (I’m not here to debate about best SEO practices).

I totally understand that. There are many conflicting schools of thought on SEO and the debates will never stop. But I should mention that our plugin has been vetted by countless SEO experts over the years, including a number working for Fortune 500 websites. We have worked directly with these, in many cases building their websites for them and applying their SEO feedback to the core plugin so as to benefit everyone of our users. We even have a large number of  our own SEO experts on staff, and have spent a number of years now modifying our plugin and testing the results to maximize SEO. It might not be perfect, but it’s pretty close. Probably as close as you can ever get.

By the way, the /category/ slug of WP can be easily hidden from url with Yoast SEO so let’s dream and hope that maybe, the Tribe team could do something similar for dozen of people that asked for since many years now…

What I was saying specifically was “it needs to be in the URL for WordPress to work in all scenarios“. The all scenarios is key here. There is a reason why WordPress adds /category/ by default, it removes the possibility of naming conflicts. Some plugins remove this and in so doing have introduced a bug which breaks WordPress at times. And even with a lot of hacky workarounds trying to minimize the impact of that bug they still are not able to eliminate it entirely. The elegant and complete solution, which many experts will argue is still perfect SEO, is the default WordPress /category/.

It’s not about what I would like, but what it should be.

I apologize, I did not realize at the outset that you were asking us to change our default structure for all users. Honestly that is something we are probably never going to do, unless our panel of SEO experts tells us there is some room for improvement. We have nearly half a million users of The Events Calendar, and so we have to weigh very seriously things such as SEO. While we do see occasional requests, as you said “dozens”, we simply can not alter this behavior at the behest of so few unless our SEO experts agreed. We actively track this feature request alongside a few others, but it simply does not seem to make sense for our other users.

The only request that really does make sense is to make our post structure as editable as WordPress in  WP Admin > Settings > Permalinks. We would still use the same defaults, and you still would not be able to remove things WordPress inserts such as /category/, but even without removing you could add to the base structure if you were so inclined. However this feature will require a truly enormous amount of dev work. And given that we only have a few handfuls of people requesting it, we are far shy of the amount needed to pay for the many thousands of dollars it will take to build it right.

Since you marked this resolved I suppose I will close this request now. I wish I had good news for you and could say that’s something we’d love to build. If we had an infinite amount of time and money we definitely would build every feature request and make everyone happy. But unfortunately the reality is the above. And hopefully now that I’ve explained things better you can understand our reasoning here.

Cheers!

– Brook

[Author]

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