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How to Fix the /blog in Permalinks After a WordPress Installation

23 threads Sep 7, 2025 Core → Requests and feedback

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If you've just set up a new WordPress site and find that /blog is unexpectedly appearing in your page URLs, you're not alone. This is a common point of confusion, especially for those who installed WordPress via a script installer in their hosting control panel (like cPanel). This article will explain why this happens and how you can fix it to get clean permalinks for your pages.

Why Does This Happen?

This issue typically occurs when the WordPress installation script configures the site's main address to point to the blog index. In many hosting environments, the default behavior is to treat the main site as a blog, which automatically appends /blog to the permalinks of any new pages you create. This is a configuration set during installation and is not related to the physical location of your files in the public_html or blog directory.

How to Remove the /blog from Permalinks

The solution involves changing your site's permalink structure directly within the WordPress dashboard. Follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your WordPress Admin Dashboard.
  2. Navigate to Settings > Permalinks.
  3. You will see several common settings. To have standard page URLs (e.g., yoursite.com/about), select the Post name option.
  4. Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

This action rewrites your site's .htaccess file (if Apache is used) and should immediately remove the /blog prefix from your page URLs. Your pages will not be lost during this process; only the way their URLs are structured will change.

What If I Can't Access the Dashboard?

In rare cases where you cannot access the admin area after making these changes, the issue might be related to how your site's URL is configured. You may need to manually update the site URLs. This can be done by adding the following lines to your wp-config.php file, above the line that says /* That's all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */:

define('WP_HOME','https://yourdomain.com');
define('WP_SITEURL','https://yourdomain.com');

Replace https://yourdomain.com with your actual domain name. After saving the file, you should be able to log in and check the permalink settings again.

A Note on SEO and HTML Files

While the original query also mentioned using individual HTML files, it's important to note that managing a site with standalone HTML pages outside of WordPress is not recommended. It can lead to maintenance challenges and potential SEO issues, as search engines may not index the content consistently. Using WordPress's built-in page management is the best practice for a unified and SEO-friendly site structure. The permalink fix above will work for pages created within WordPress.

If you continue to experience issues, the problem may be specific to your hosting environment's configuration. In such cases, reaching out to your hosting provider's support team for assistance with server-level rewrite rules is the recommended next step.

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