{"id":1743,"date":"2020-09-07T07:09:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T23:09:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intelliwolf.com\/?p=1743"},"modified":"2020-09-07T07:09:29","modified_gmt":"2020-09-06T23:09:29","slug":"stop-wordpress-partial-match-redirection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress-757293-2559390.cloudwaysapps.com\/stop-wordpress-partial-match-redirection\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Stop WordPress Partial Match Redirection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>We had an unusual situation where we deleted a page and wanted to serve a 404 error page in its place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Instead, anyone who went to that URL was redirected to another page on the site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That hadn't happened with any other URLs. Then it happened with another page we deleted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were no redirect plugins in place and no redirects in the .htaccess file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On further investigation, WordPress was guessing that if we typed in a partial match for a longer URL, we must have meant that longer URL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That's when I came across canonical redirects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How to stop WordPress partial match redirection:<\/strong> on WordPress 5.5 and above, add a filter to <em>'do_redirect_guess_404_permalink<\/em>' that returns false. For earlier versions, add a filter to <em>'redirect_canonical'<\/em> that returns false if <em>is_404()<\/em> is true or returns the URL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">WordPress 5.5+ Solution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Since WordPress 5.5.0, if you want to stop WordPress guessing the permalink and return a 404 error, use this code:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>add_filter( 'do_redirect_guess_404_permalink', 'stop_redirect_guess');\n\nfunction stop_redirect_guess() {\n  return false;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Solution For Older WordPress Versions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>On older versions of WordPress, we need to connect earlier in the sequence and check if we're on a 404 page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This code still works in newer versions of WordPress, so if you need something that covers before and after an upgrade, use this code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here's how it looks in code:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>add_filter( 'redirect_canonical', 'stop_redirect_guess' );\n\nfunction stop_redirect_guess( $url ) {\n  if ( is_404() ) {\n    return false;\n  }\n  return $url;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>or if you prefer something more compact, you could use:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>add_filter( 'redirect_canonical', 'stop_redirect_guess' );\r\n\r\nfunction stop_redirect_guess( $url ) {\r\n  return is_404() ? false : $url;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>That's the same functionality as the previous, just as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.php.net\/manual\/en\/language.operators.comparison.php#language.operators.comparison.ternary\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">ternary operator<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Strict Match Guessing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In WordPress 5.5+ you can also control whether the guess is strict or not using this code:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-code\"><code>add_filter( 'strict_redirect_guess_404_permalink', 'strict_redirect_guessing');\n\nfunction strict_redirect_guessing() {\n  return true;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>This to be useful in is where you have a folder structure and you only want to redirect when the full slug is present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For example, with strict guessing turned to <em>true<\/em>, <em>domain.com\/hello<\/em> will no longer redirect to <em>domain.com\/2020\/09\/hello-world\/<\/em> but <em>domain.com\/hello-world<\/em> will redirect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If you have strict guessing turned to false (or delete your code), <em>domain.com\/hello<\/em> will redirect to <em>domain.com\/2020\/09\/hello-world\/<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The same applies to contractions. With strict guessing turned off, <em>domain.com\/find\/sample<\/em> will redirect to <em>domain.com\/sample-page\/<\/em> but it will not redirect if you turn strict guessing off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The way the strict guessing works is the SQL uses <em>post_name LIKE [slug]%<\/em> as default or <em>post_name = [slug]<\/em> for strict matching.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We had an unusual situation where we deleted a page and wanted to serve a 404 error page in its place. Instead, anyone who went to that URL was redirected to another page on the site. That hadn&#8217;t happened with any other URLs. Then it happened with another page we deleted. There were no redirect<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n<title>How To Stop WordPress Partial Match Redirection<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.intelliwolf.com\/stop-wordpress-partial-match-redirection\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How To Stop WordPress Partial Match Redirection\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We had an unusual situation where we deleted a page and wanted to serve a 404 error page in its place. Instead, anyone who went to that URL was redirected to another page on the site. That hadn&#039;t happened with any other URLs. Then it happened with another page we deleted. There were no redirect\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.intelliwolf.com\/stop-wordpress-partial-match-redirection\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Intelliwolf\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-09-06T23:09:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-09-06T23:09:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mike Haydon\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mike Haydon\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" 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