About this plugin
Choosing a new slug for every post, term, or language version is extra URL design work. Slug-Free Permalinks lets you move that work out of the publishing flow by using an item’s ID in the permalink instead.
Select the public post types and taxonomies you want to change, choose a URL format, and keep the rest of your site on its existing permalink structure. The plugin is intentionally focused: it changes URL structure without adding content features or front-end UI.
Why use ID-based permalinks?
- Reduce the number of slug decisions and maintenance steps as your content grows.
- Keep the URL pattern consistent even when titles, translations, or editorial wording change.
- Apply the change selectively instead of switching every post type at once.
You can choose between:
- /post/123/
- /post-123/
The plugin only affects the post types and taxonomies you enable in the settings screen.
What you can configure:
- Select individual public post types
- Select individual public taxonomies
- Use each selected type’s registered rewrite slug for the ID-based route
- Choose slash or hyphen based ID permalink format
- Optionally redirect legacy slug URLs to the current ID-based permalink when WordPress can resolve the request
- Preserve Polylang language URLs using the language home URLs Polylang actually exposes
- Flush rewrite rules automatically when settings change
A focused, predictable change
Legacy slug redirects are optional and only run when WordPress can already resolve the request. Slug-Free Permalinks does not guess at every 404, so it avoids turning an ID-based permalink plugin into a site-wide slug lookup system.
The plugin is intended for new sites, structured-content sites, or projects that are still defining a permalink policy.
If your site already has many established slug-based URLs, review existing inbound links, search traffic, social shares, and editorial workflow assumptions before enabling it.
- Plugin page (English)
- Plugin page (Japanese)
- Development repository
Slug-Free Permalinks is completely free to use. If you find it useful, you can support the project on GitHub Sponsors.
Known limitations:
- The settings screen rejects selected post types or taxonomies with identical registered rewrite slugs.
- Only path prefixes exposed by Polylang language home URLs are registered as prefixed ID routes; arbitrary prefixes are not accepted.