Redirect old date-based permalinks on structure changes

[SergeyBiryukov]

If someone switches from /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ to /%postname%/:

• /%year%/%postname%/ redirects to the correct URL.
• /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/ shows a 404 error.
• /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ shows a 404 error.

All of these URLs should redirect to the correct one.

[anonymized_16373709]

#44849 was marked as a duplicate.

[cleancoded]

First of all change the permalink structure from Word Press Dashboard, in setting -> Permalinks change structure to post name.

Next step is redirect old URL structure to new structure from your server configuration.
For Apache you can add these redirection rules in your .htaccess file.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/([0-9]{2})/([0-9]{2})/(?!page/)(.+)$ http://%{HTTP_HOST}/$4 [L,R=301]

Now the next thing is to change the links saved in your database.
As we know Word Press save data arrays as serialized string as

a:3:{s:4:"home";s:42:"https://www.example.com/2018/12/04/my-post";s:4:"link";}

It is very complicated to update these links manually.
You can use a PHP Script for search and replace word press databases. You can download it from ​here.

Follow the instructions and install it in a separate directory that’s a peer to wp-admin and wp-content.
I gave the directory a name like srDB_201812. Then you just go to ​http://example.com/srDB_201812/index.php and you’ll see a nice admin interface.

Enter your regular expression for search, what you want to replace it with, and enter your database credentials.
Perform the live run and you’re done.