How can I reverse engineer a Permalink to Find the Page?

Addressing both your original question and the question implied by your comment …

Finding the page ID

Every post and page within WordPress is given an ID. By default, WordPress uses the ID in the link structure: http://www.example.com/?page=ID or http://www.example.com/?p=ID (for posts). You can change this to a more user-friendly structure called “pretty permalinks” that will use the page slug in the URL instead: http://www.example.com/my-page-slug.

In practice, though, these permalinks can become very long. This is bad for certain situations (i.e. posting to Twitter), so WordPress retains the shorter ID-based URLs as “shortlinks.”

You can figure out the shortlink for a particular post or page by navigating to that page, right-clicking, and selecting “view source.” Then look through the source for a specific section of meta tags:

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress 3.0.3" /> 
<link rel="shortlink" href="http://example.com/?p=2" />

This “shortlink” tag tells you that you’re looking for post #2.

Finding the page in WordPress admin

You’ve already discovered the easiest way to find a post or page – just search for the page slug when you’re in the admin. This will find it almost every time, or at least give you a small list of possibilities.

Another way is to use the ID you discovered above to jump straight to the post/page edit screen. Every post or page edit screen uses the following URL structure: http://example.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=ID&action=edit

Just substitute the ID you discovered above for ID in the URL and you’ll be taken to the post/page edit screen for that content.

Template Files

Page templates are defined by your theme. They’ll all be located somewhere in the /wp-content/themes/YOUR-THEME/ folder. The name of the page template (which you saw on the post edit screen) might give you a hint as to which file you’re looking for, but I can’t guarantee it.

Just know that all page template files will begin with the following code:

<?php 
/* Template Name: PAGE TEMPLATE NAME */ 
?>

So if you have more than one template file defined by your theme, looking for this tag will help you identify the specific one you’ll need to edit. This template will define the HTML and PHP code used by pages that specifically call out that particular template.

Related Posts:

  1. Is it possible to get a page link from its slug?
  2. How can I store page ID in a post instead of other selected permalink?
  3. Page begins with number, WordPress adds 2
  4. Removing hierarchical pages in the permalink
  5. Can WordPress realistically handle a site with 500 ‘pages’?
  6. Subdomains to pages
  7. Passing variables through permalink structure
  8. Broken wordpress permalinks on pages only
  9. How to get a page url by a page id?
  10. How to Remove Slug From Database?
  11. Relative or Absolute Paths for Flash Video Player Files
  12. Should I use relative or absolute urls when pointing to internal pages
  13. How to change the permalink structure of a master page?
  14. Why I can’t change the permalink of this page?
  15. Page Attachment Permalink Structure based on Menu Order?
  16. Get closest page ID from URL
  17. How can I add a page’s ID to its permalink using WP_Rewrite?
  18. Permalinks for pages
  19. Permalinks by page/post name returning 404
  20. Pages not using permalink
  21. How to get post object on blog template
  22. Is it possible for a custom post type and sub pages of a page with the same slug as the custom post type to share a slug?
  23. Add prefix to page URL based on the page template
  24. get_permalink returning site home url instead of the url of slug being passed
  25. Get the url of a page template without using the page slug and ID
  26. Remove -2 from URL; no duplicate pages, no images, no pages in trash
  27. Host frontpage via example.com and everything else via example.com/blog
  28. WordPress is suppressing page extensions!
  29. Let me choose permalinks
  30. Passing the JQuery string to Worldpress URL
  31. Path to Pages Resolves to Archive instead of Actual Content
  32. Changing permalink name redirects to another template?
  33. Permalink opens attachment instead of page
  34. How do I reclaim either deleted pages or their permalinks?
  35. Permalink of a page that has already been deleted
  36. Edit permalink for certain pages
  37. cannot link a external url, present page url acting as parent url
  38. Test site pages go to main site
  39. how to get a list of all top level pages
  40. “-2” Being added to end of URL (no duplicate pages, no pages in trash)
  41. Redirect From Url To Url
  42. How are WordPress Page URLs affected by permalink settings?
  43. How to use page jumps to top of banner and page title?
  44. Get a link to paged() part?
  45. WordPress Page Not Found if Permalink Settings is Postname
  46. Pagination url for page template
  47. Why does enabling Permalinks make pages not found?
  48. Page content doesn’t display when published but does when previewed as draft?
  49. Update page breaks permalinks
  50. WP as a CMS menu
  51. Subdomains pointing to a permalink URL
  52. How can I see a list of all pages my WordPress site has generated?
  53. Auto Changing Text Case
  54. Default Permalink Structure for Pages
  55. Non Latin page permalink problem
  56. How do I structure my permalinks in WordPress?
  57. Link to a page before launch
  58. My WP homepage works, but the other pages don’t when accessing from out side of my network
  59. Nested permalink without dummy parent page
  60. Custom Permalink (with category) for Pages
  61. Can I link to content dynamically from a page to a new page?
  62. Woocommerce product page 404 not found
  63. Page returns 404 for specific permalink
  64. Change all pages permalinks instead of hierarchical to have id of the page
  65. The permalink for the page doesn’t work and page’s defined link throws “Object not found!”
  66. Page permalink ending in “-2”
  67. Change the permalinks structure
  68. Development before domain name chosen
  69. Select page/template from the permalink url
  70. Permalink for pages
  71. Mystery ghost page not appearing in Admin
  72. Category pagination first link works, remaining don’t
  73. Permalinks of New Pages and their Parents
  74. Why doesn’t my page know it’s a page (won’t return true for is_page())?
  75. WordPress 4.4+ breaks Walker Extension
  76. Is there a way to regenerate page permalinks without a plugin?
  77. Use an empty page to build custom plugin output
  78. Change the custom post type permalink
  79. How to replace “wp-content/blogs.dir” with “media” for attachment permalinks?
  80. If the only permalink setting is %postname% what happens in the case of old duplicates?
  81. How to modify the slug for the default wp posts without affecting other posttypes?
  82. WordPress menu permalink redirects to wrong page
  83. Losing preview ability: W3 Total Cache + Post name permalinks
  84. How to change “attachment_id” in attachment permarlink?
  85. How to use different domains for different blogs hosted in the same host in subdomains with .htaccess
  86. Changing WordPress routing to load the same page for different URLs
  87. Custom post type clean shortlink
  88. the_content(); erroneously closing off previous opening before it
  89. Bulk append URL (add word to slug)
  90. Shortcodes not working
  91. WordPress permalink not working on subdomain
  92. Add /blog prefix for all WordPress front end url
  93. Bulk update set of URLs via SQL
  94. Choose permalink on a per-post basis?
  95. How to put articles under a /blog directory?
  96. Is there a way to add slug to home_url on this function?
  97. Customized author slugs not working with get_author_posts_url method
  98. region selection
  99. Redirecting From An Old Permalink Structure
  100. Include language variable in url

Leave a Comment