Walt at Random

Testing whether WordPress will prevent duplicate URLs on long titles when using title URLs, Part 2

So here’s the second post, and I think I see the answer: To wit, WordPress will allow a very long URL. And, in this case, where I copied the title, then discarded the draft (because I thought the URL had been truncated), it appears that it automatically adds a “-2″ (because the discarded draft is probably still around.

So I guess the answer is:

• Duplicate URLs shouldn’t happen–probably not even if you deliberately use precisely the same actual title (I’ll test that shortly)
• But WP URLs can get pretty long…

All things considered, I think this is preferable behavior.

This work by Walt Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported

This entry was posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “Testing whether WordPress will prevent duplicate URLs on long titles when using title URLs, Part 2”

1. Joe Clark Says:
   January 25th, 2011 at 5:07 am

   You’re supposed to manually edit the slug (the actual term, not “URL”) to one or two words, not live with the defaults. In other words, the way I do it is correct and relying on defaults isn’t.

2. walt Says:
   January 25th, 2011 at 8:09 am

   Joe: “You’re supposed to…”–wow, I must have missed that in the training manual for Correct Blogginess. Along with the assertion that a string starting http://… isn’t really a URL.

   On the other hand, your Correctness simply doesn’t deal with the only reason these posts exist: To wit, does the blogging software assure unique addresses? It appears that WP does; it seems that SixApart’s software doesn’t.

   Otherwise: Relying on defaults where feasible is the way most of us focus our energies on stuff that matters. I don’t plan to stop doing that.