Thank you as always for visiting “martto.Creative”! I’m Dorami, the administrator of this site.
Today, I’d like to share a recent, cold-sweat-inducing “bizarre bug” that actually happened on my website. If you run a WordPress site—especially if you’re particular about setting up your custom URL slugs—this is a massive blind spot you definitely need to know about!
The Isolated Island Discovered During a Mobile Check
Usually, I spend my time typing away on my Windows PC to write articles, but I regularly browse around my own site on my smartphone to check how things look on mobile screens and make sure the content is easy to read.
On that day, I was planning to re-read one of my past Cocoon column articles on my phone. So, I went to the category list page and tapped the link for that specific post.
And then… wait, what?
Instead of opening the article, I was forcibly redirected to my “Cocoon-Guide Article Index” page—a custom page I had crafted using shortcodes! Thinking, “Huh? Did I mis-tap?” I tried again, and even tried navigating from a completely different path, but I kept getting pulled right back to that same static page…
Articles above and below it opened perfectly fine, but only the article titled “Why Cocoon is the Strongest Free WordPress Theme Even by Global Standards” refused to open, continuously warping me back to the article index. It was as if my passionate column article had vanished into an isolated island where no one could ever find it. My head was filled with question marks, and I rushed back to my computer.
The Biggest Blind Spot of Overly Helpful WordPress
When I checked on my PC, the link path displayed in the bottom-left corner when hovering over it with the mouse clearly pointed to the post’s actual URL. As I typed out a message to consult AI while pondering the issue… ah… I got it… I remembered! It wasn’t a glitch at all, but rather due to WordPress’s URL hierarchy rules (specifications).
In fact, driven by my desire for “readability,” I had created a static page with the URL path /cocoon-guide/ on July 14th. However, at that point, the URL of the article I had already published contained the exact same name: cocoon-guide.
In WordPress, when URLs between regular posts overlap, there’s a feature that automatically appends numbers like “-2” to the end to prevent duplicates, right? Because of that, I had completely trusted the system system-wide.
However, there was a massive trap right here. Despite interfering so much with duplicate posts, when the slug of a [Static Page] and a [Post] match completely, WordPress has a rather half-baked specification that lets it register without throwing a single warning…!
On top of that, when duplicate URLs exist, WordPress rules dictate that static pages take ultimate precedence. Because of this, the system determined 100% that “Ah, access to this URL (cocoon-guide) means showing the static page, not the post!” creating an infinite loop that redirected users to the static page no matter where they clicked.
Problem Solved by Changing the Post Slug! Failure is the Best Spice
Once the cause was identified, the fix took only a second. I updated the post slug to why-cocoon-is-the-best, a name fitting for its passionate content. The bridge to the island opened up instantly, and both pages returned to completely normal operation!
Through this incident, I deeply felt firsthand how crucial it is not to just rely on a PC screen, but to regularly perform self-checks using your own hands and a smartphone.
But wait, does changing the slug of an already published article affect SEO performance?
You might wonder about that, right?
However, in this case, setting up a 301 redirect isn’t an option. If I did that, users wouldn’t be able to access the article index page anymore! 😂
That’s where Google Search Console comes to the rescue!
I simply requested re-indexing for the article with the newly configured slug. Lately, I’m genuinely amazed at how fast it goes from request to completed indexing—literally in seconds.
Anyway, it was quite a chaotic day where something I carefully built in the past came back to bite me like a riddle-filled trap across time. Everyone, when setting up your slugs, please double-check whether they overlap with your old static pages!
