As David said, no big problems. In fact, I had no loss of traffic at all.

Usually you won't need the plural form. As for your main question, I agree with previous responders: Option #2!

Good to hear. BTW /%category%/%postname%/ triggers verbose rules. I think it's a great permalink structure if you utilize your categories in main nav, for example. Plus, the URLs look good

Thank you.

I have to change the permalink structure in wordpress, as using /%postname%/ in conjunction with a couple thousand pages triggers verbose rewrite rules, which further triggers about 5,000 requests per page load. The permalink structure must change as wordpress development probably won't change this in the near future.

Now, changing the permalink structure worries me quite a bit, as about 25% of my traffic is attributed to my blog posts -- the rest is covered through CMS-like-use of pages (75%).

• blog posts will change permalink/url structure, pages won't
• The website is very respected in my niche and has quite a few links going to most of my posts and pages, as well as the homepage
• I've noticed in the last year that anything I post starts ranking on page 1 of Google for very competitive kws in 1-3 days, often with top 3 rankings
• PR4 / decent Alexa / Moz ranks not too shabby either / quality content / decent social media linking (mainly Facebook) / no penalties

I provided the factors as to not gloat, but rather to get the best answer from those who have fairly established websites and perhaps had to change their URLs and noticed some or no changes to their rankings.

How long of a hit am I going to take / how much my posts might drop down in SERPs if I change the permalink structure, properly 301 them, and implement all changes in one swoop?

Info for WordPress users

• Benefits of changing the permalink structure to /%post_id%/%postname%/ -- for example -- include: way faster load times, not having 5,000 requests per page load, avoiding verbose rewrite rules trigger, finally modify the site without worrying about crashing the website and using a local server to make changes on thousands of pages (the database backups, the ritual of changing the settings in the local database, changing the post/page, saving the local database, loading the locally saved db on live server, and crossing fingers and pray it works -- just takes so darn long.) Ahh..yes, huge time saver.

** this issue occurs when using WP as a CMS with several hundred pages + and using the /%postname%/ or /%category%//%postname%/ or /somethingstatic/%postname%/ -- IF USING the date based way /%year%/%postname%/ or /%post_id%/%postname%/ you should be fine.

I ended up doing what you recommended. I downloaded the Redirection plugin.

I copied the URL with %C2%A0 in it and setup a target URL without the space and the results were great. I double checked all my other redirects, in case of conflict - no worries there. Also I used the server header checker tool and saw a great 301 returning a 200 OK. That felt good.

I still wanted to learn how to do it vs. how to "plug it" - see my thread here for all other woes related to this URL

In the meanwhile I found out that it wasn't several great sites that were linking wrongly, it's like close to ten (some .edu, .org, and even one .mil - editorial links).

Sometimes it's better to conform than to be a "purist". I saved tons of time by doing what I contemplated doing initially. Thanks for the push and for the help, Dan.

That is an idea I have contemplated, but I'm trying to limit the number of plugins. I have other redirects working very well, but this one with the "space" is so pesky. I would love to solve the issue using .htaccess if possible. I am looking into other solutions and will post here when anything comes up. In the meanwhile, I hope others may help, too.

Dan, thank you for your great feedback.

Dan,

Thanks for your response. I tried your recommendations. None worked.

http://mysite.com/archives/10-college- majors/ is what I found in the source code, but my AWSTATS and Google Webmaster Tools point to a URL %C2%A0 as the culprit 404 error. I double checked if the URL registering in my Stats and Google WT is from that PR6 page - yes it is.

There's no space in the URL from source code and I did a 301 redirect with this variation (see original post)

The url only shows the space in the browser's address bar, but not in source.

UPDATE
the   redirect works, and it did work. Even so, when looking at source of page linking to mine, the URL looks like this: ```
http://mysite.com/archives/10-college- majors/

Clicking the URL in Source View in FireFox takes me to ```
http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/

none of my 301 redirects should direct there. I don't have any redirect plugins either.

Below is my setup for redirects in .htaccess file in my root word press installation.

• The www to non-www works well, so no problems there
• Other page redirects work well, too (example: redirect 301 /some-page/ http://mysite.com/another-page/ (I didn't post those because I have a few too many : )

So here it goes...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mysite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mysite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

BEGIN WordPress

<ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule>

END WordPress

redirect 301 /archives/10-college- majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/

redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%20majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/

redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/

I'm having a problem with the last 301 redirect:

• redirect 301 /archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/ http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-majors/

not working... As you can see I've tried using other varations of the "space" but no go. I also used a redirect in cPanel's Redirect screen; testing all the possible options + wildcard

I've also tried this:

• http://serverfault.com/questions/201829/using-special-characters-in-apache-mod-rewrite-rule (perhaps unsuccessfully, because it caused a 500 server error and it's a different situation in my case)

I also saw something here:

• http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3908682.htm

but I don't know if it works and how I would implement that + do so without compromising ALL other redirects.

Note: the URL displays with a space in the address bar of all major web browsers: http://mysite.com/10-college- majors/  and goes to a 404 page

I have a goregous page / PR6 / high authority site linking to the URL on my site, but they copied the URL with a space somehow. I contacted the person responsible for the website and he claims it works fine (aka he didn't check it).

Is there a clean way to redirect ONLY this problematic URL without compromising other redirects, etc?

Any ideas would be great. I'll respond with progress. Thanks in advance.

UPDATE
the   redirect works, and it did work. Even so, when looking at source of page linking to mine, the URL looks like this: ```
http://mysite.com/archives/10-college- majors/

Clicking the URL in Source View in FireFox takes me to ```
http://mysite.com/archives/10-college-%C2%A0majors/

none of my 301 redirects should direct there. I don't have any redirect plugins either.