[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #5280: cannot use "tag" as permalink base for categories

[WordPress Trac]

#5280: cannot use "tag" as permalink base for categories
----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
 Reporter:  azizpoonawalla  |       Owner:  anonymous       
     Type:  defect          |      Status:  new             
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  2.3.2           
Component:  General         |     Version:                  
 Severity:  normal          |    Keywords:  tags, categories
----------------------------+-----------------------------------------------
 Prior to v2.3.x I had been using the URL base "tags" for my category
 permalinks, as follows:

 {{{
 <a href="http://www.haibane.info/tags/stranger-than-
 fiction/">http://www.haibane.info/topic/stranger-than-fiction/</a>
 }}}

 which would return the list of all posts categorized as "stranger than
 fiction" on my weblog. This is set by the Options:Permalinks menu. The
 benefit to this was that categories were indexed as tags by Technorati
 without having to install a full-fledged tag plugin (which was otherwise
 essentially redundant with existing WP category functionality).

 After upgrading to WP 2.3.1 (from v2.2, bypassing v2.3) the link above
 returns a 404. It seems that the text strings "tag" or "tags" (tag* ?) are
 reserved only for tags and may not be used for categories. Is this
 intentional or a bug in how the namespace is designed?

 Since you may not have a tag and a category with identical names, there
 seems no reason for such a limitation to exist. 2.3.x now adds an option
 to specify the permalink base for cats and for tags separately (sugested
 as "topics" for the former and "tags" for the latter). If such an option
 is given to the user, why not permit arbitrary strings; even the perverse
 case where the permalink base is "categories" for tags and "tags" for
 categories.

 I did attempt to specify the same string for both permalink bases ("tag").
 There was no objection from Wordpress, it allowed me to save the setting
 without error, but the URL above attempting to retrieve all posts from a
 given category still returned a 404 (and worked fine for a tag example).

 My specific feature request for v2.3.2 is that no hidden constraints be
 placed on what string we choose for permalink bases for either categories
 or tags. Whether a user chooses all tags, all cats, or some combination of
 both, or what they desire in their URL permalinks, should be entirely
 user-determined and no predefined preferences should be hard-coded (by
 design or accident) into the system.

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Ticket URL: <http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/5280>
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