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FlexURL is a plugin for WordPress users to allow broken long URLs to work in spite of their broken-ness. But it only works on WordPress 1.5.x.

For Wordpress 1.2 users, the fix is not as simple as a plugin, but it is only a one-line code change. Here’s how to implement it on your own blog:

1. Go to your blog directory and make a backup copy of wp-blog-header.php, like so:
   cp wp-blog-header.php wp-blog-header.php.bak

2. Edit the wp-blog-header.php file in your favorite text editor:
   vi wp-blog-header.php

3. Find this section of code (search for “AND post_name”). I found it on line 191:
   $where .= " AND post_name = '$name'";

4. Change this line by replacing “=” with “LIKE” and adding a percent sign after $name, like so:
   $where .= " AND post_name LIKE ‘$name%‘”;

5. Save it and get out.

Make sure you don’t accidentally add a blank line to the end of this file. Some (pico?) editors will do this automatically. Avoid them. If a blank line gets added, it may causes PHP errors saying something like “Unable to alter headers after output on line …” If this happens, fix the file by deleting the blank line or blank spaces at the end of the file. Or go to your backup file from step 1:
cp wp-blog-header.php.bak wp-blog-header.php

[Edit: 06/08/2005]
To make the browser show the corrected URL in the address bar instead of the broken one, do this:

1. Find this section at the very end of wp-blog-header.php:

if (1 == count($posts)) {
    if ($p || $name) {
        $more = 1;
        $single = 1;
    }
    if ($s && empty($paged)) { ...

2. Insert the two lines below (in bold) so it looks like this:

if (1 == count($posts)) {
    if ($p || $name) {
        $more = 1;
        $single = 1;
    }

    if (stristr(get_permalink($posts[0]->ID), $name.'/') === FALSE)
    HEADER ( 'Location: ' . get_permalink($posts[0]->ID) );

    if ($s && empty($paged)) { ...

This entry was posted on Monday, June 6th, 2005 at 4:01 pm and is filed under wordpress. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.