Not Preventing Duplicate URLs

Hi @fencer04,

To be honest, this was done by design. I applied it as a “soft” alert without changing any user-entered permalinks, so the users can decide how to proceed.

The main reason behind it is that I receive repeated support requests where users wanted to use the plugin to override native taxonomy archive URLs with custom pages built in Elementor or Beaver Builder.

Your point makes absolute sense, so I will add a new toggle field “Force unique permalinks” in the plugin settings, so the plugin can automatically handle this (if user decides to).

In the meantime (before new version is released), please use this code snippet as a temp. patch:

function pm_force_unique_permalink( $new_uri, $post_id, $post = '' ) {
	global $permalink_manager_uris;

	// Determine post ID
	if ( is_a( $post, 'WP_Post' ) ) {
		$post_id = $post->ID;
	} elseif ( ! is_numeric( $post_id ) ) {
		return $new_uri;
	}

	// Copy URIs and exclude current element
	$uris = $permalink_manager_uris;
	unset( $uris[ $post_id ] );

	$uris = array_flip( $uris );

	// Prepare base + extension
	if ( ! preg_match( '/^(.+?)(?:-([\d]+))?(\.[^\.]+$|$)/', $new_uri, $parts ) ) {
		return $new_uri; // fallback if regex fails
	}

	$base      = $parts[1];
	$index     = empty( $parts[2] ) ? 1 : (int) $parts[2];
	$extension = $parts[3];

	$unique_uri = $new_uri;

	// Increment suffix until URI is unique
	while ( isset( $uris[ $unique_uri ] ) ) {
		$index++;
		$unique_uri = "{$base}-{$index}{$extension}";
	}

	return $unique_uri;
}
add_filter( 'permalink_manager_pre_update_post_uri', 'pm_force_unique_permalink', 999, 3 );
add_filter( 'permalink_manager_filter_default_post_uri', 'pm_force_unique_permalink', 999, 3 );

I am happy to help 🙂

Once the new version is released, please make sure that “Force unique custom permalinks” option is enabled in the plugin settings:

Hi @fencer04,

The function that forces the unique permalinks ignores the language code, so it will automatically append “-2” to the slug for URLs in the different languages. I will try to adjust this in the next plugin’s release, but for now I would recommend to turn “Force unique custom permalinks” off.

The quickest way to adjust the previous URLs is to use bulk editor – if you use “-2” as search term – you should be able to find all the affected custom permalinks:

Yes, I will try to implement the patch to the dev version in the next 1-2 hours. I will get back to you immediately after I finish and double-check it.

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Technically, the “-2” can be appended also if you have auto-update mode enabled + slugs mode uses the default settings (“Use WordPress slugs”).

Could you send me the screenshot with:

• Permastructure settings (“Tools -> Permalink Manager -> Permastructures”)
• General settings (“Tools -> Permalink Manager -> Settings -> General settings”)

If possible, please also record a short video showing all the steps, so I can reproduce them on my test server.

• This reply was modified 2 months, 2 weeks ago by Maciej Bis.

Thanks, everything is set-up correctly. Have you tried to check if it works for more than one specific custom permalink or for more of them?

Troubleshooting this further can be difficult, because I am not able to reproduce this bug any longer. After I identified it and applied a fix, the Permalink_Manager_Helper_Functions::force_unique_uri() function seem to work as expected.

I have tested it in several configurations, including both WPML and Polylang – but I think I might missing something – could you possibly record a screencast or send me extra screenshots showing step-by-step how exactly you edit the permalink?

Perfect, I am glad that it works correctly now.

The patch will be added in the next plugin’s release.