How an address is built:
Every page lives at your site address, then your prefix, then the page's slug:
https://yoursite.com/h/your-page/
- The prefix is set under Settings, URL Settings. The default is h.
- The slug comes from the page title when you first publish. Change it with the Edit button next to the permalink under the title.
- If two pages would get the same slug, WordPress adds a number, such as your-page-2.
- WordPress installed in a subfolder works too. The subfolder simply comes before the prefix.
Pretty permalinks are needed:
Go to Settings, Permalinks in WordPress and choose any option except Plain. The Diagnostics tab shows a warning if your site is set to Plain.
What addresses work:
- The exact page address, with or without the last slash.
- The page address with tracking parameters on the end, such as ?source=email. These are fine for your ad and email tracking.
- A single-file page has nothing after its own address, so something like /h/your-page/extra/ is not served. That is why a single file needs full addresses for its images.
- A page uploaded as a ZIP is different: its other files open under the page address, for example /h/your-page/images/photo.jpg.
Changing the prefix:
Changing the prefix moves every page to a new address, and links to the old addresses break. If your pages show Page not found right after a change, go to Settings, Permalinks in WordPress and click Save Changes without changing anything. That refreshes WordPress's address rules. Tip: choose a prefix that is not already the address of a normal page or category on your site.
What visitors and link checkers get:
Published pages always answer with a normal success status, so the link checkers used by email services and social platforms see a working page. Drafts are never shown to visitors. The plugin tells browsers not to cache the page, so visitors always get your latest version.
What search engines see:
Search engines see your HTML exactly as you uploaded it.
- The title in search results comes from the title tag in your file. The description comes from your file's meta description tag. Add both to every page.
- Search and social sharing tags added by SEO plugins through your theme do not appear on these pages. Put the tags you want in your HTML head, or in the page's Head Code.
- Social sharing previews come from the preview tags in your HTML head too.
- The plugin sends a header that allows indexing and following links.
- Published HTML pages are a public content type, so the WordPress built-in sitemap at /wp-sitemap.xml can list them, unless another plugin replaces that sitemap.
Keep a page out of search:
Add this to the page's Head Code, or to the head of your file:
meta name="robots" content="noindex" (inside angle brackets, as a normal meta tag) Major search engines follow the most restrictive instruction they find, so the noindex tag wins.