[wp-hackers] Permalink problems

[Harish Narayanan]

RePost wrote:
> Harish Narayanan wrote:
>> I would suggest you pick a human-readable URL style that you will never
>> change in the future. As useful as /?p= style links are, human beings
>> will probably never use them, so in essence even your 'friendly URL'
>> style is frozen. Choose wisely and keep it fixed.
>>   
> Lots of helpful information there. I've used your method to correct a
> lot of the bad urls, so the site's looking a bit better.
> 
> On this one highlighted point, my question would be, is it OK --
> Googlewise -- to use the default (/?p=) style for internal links,
> knowing that they will be forwarded to the friendly urls by the 301
> redirect in my .htaccess file?
> 
> Or am I creating a redundancy problem for Google by allowing friendly
> url Permalinks while I continue to point to those default urls?

It is not a technical problem (either for Google or for WordPress), but
have you thought about why you want to do this?

If I (a third person) were to link to your site, I'd always prefer a
human-friendly URL given the choice. You want to subject my links (and
every other incoming link) to a 301 redirect (which implies the page has
been moved permanently) just so (I think) you can satisfy some internal
(in your head) notion of good link canonicalisation (which is probably
not a real word). You should start thinking of /?p= as a technical
detail (something you should not bother humans with) and not as
something inherently canonical (or good, or pure, or ...).

Do you really want unique pages on your site to be linked-to via
non-unique URLs (human-friendly by me, /?p= internally, /date/ by
someone else etc.) just because you know technology won't be confused?

Harish