[wp-hackers] weird permalink issue

[Steve Taylor]

Hi there,

I've just solved some hideous performance issues on a client's site
that turned out to be because of this:

http://ottopress.com/2010/category-in-permalinks-considered-harmful/

The permalink for posts was:

/%category%/news%/%postname%/

It's now:

/%year%/%category%/news/%postname%/

And things are much better :)

Apart from one item of weirdness. A particular URL:

http://www.integer-research.com/conferences/dec-brazil/2011/delegates/

Now redirects to:

http://www.integer-research.com/2010/fertilizers-chemicals/news/delegates-predict-world-cup-winner/

Actually, every /delegates/ page on every conference redirects there.

Now, that first URL isn't really a page. The system I've built
intercepts that 404 and serves up a dynamic template. I guess the
rewriting must be finding no page from the database and doing some
kind of leap of imagination to the post above.

The "fix" I've done for now is the change the slug for this "dynamic URL" to:

http://www.integer-research.com/conferences/dec-brazil/2011/the-delegates/

Works fine.

There are other "dynamic URL" pages that still work fine.

I guess I could create an actual page at that location, but the whole
point of these dynamic pages is that when the client creates a new
conference, some bits, like the delegates list, happen automatically -
it doesn't rely on them remembering to create them.

Just wondered if anyone else had had issues with clashes like this
with permalink structures, and if there's any other workarounds.

cheers,

Steve