Edit permalinks

It's a search indexing best practice to keep your permalinks updated so they're valid with the content on the page.

When you make changes to an article or category permalink, consider these factors:

Does the permalink accurately reflect the content on the page? While you can use almost anything for a permalink, for search indexing purposes, SEO, and AEO, you'll want it to contain relevant keywords.
Is the new permalink valid? Avoid duplicating another permalink, invalid charactors, and so on. Our editor provides feedback for these situations. Refer to Invalid new permalink for explanations of error messages and how to fix them.
If the content is published, should you redirect readers from the old permalink to the new one? In most cases, to avoid the dreaded 404, you'll want to set up an old link redirect from the old permalink to the new one. Refer to Old links to manually or automatically add redirects for previous permalinks.

When you edit a permalink for a category or article, we'll provide some visual feedback as to its validity.

How to update permalinks

The information below varies based on whether you're using our 2026 new editor or old editor.

To figure out which instructions to follow:

Open any article for editing.
If the lefthand navigation is collapsed and there's a link near the top of the page to Switch to old editor, follow the New editor documentation.
If the lefthand navigation is expanded and the top of the editor and the righthand column have a heavier grey background, follow the Old editor documentation.

Here are side-by-side examples of the new editor and the old editor:

Sample New editor

Sample Old editor

Try out the new editor
We'd love your feedback on the new editor. To switch to the new editor, open any article for editing and select the Switch to new editor link at the top of the editor.

To update an article permalink in the new article editor:

Open the article for editing.
Hover over the Permalink so the permalink action icons appear to the right of it.
Select the pencil icon (Edit permalink).
Hover over the permalink and select the pencil icon (Edit permalink).The Edit permalink modal opens.
Enter your new permalink in the textbox.
1. If your permalink is valid, a green checkmark appears at the edge of the text box and the Save button becomes active:
  Sample valid permalink edit. Note the green checkmark and the active Save button.
2. If your permalink is invalid, review the Invalid new permalink information below for explanations of error messages and how to fix them.
Once you enter a valid new permalink, select Save to update the permalink.
The Add old link modal opens:
Sample Add old link modalIf you select Add old link in this modal, the previous permalink is automatically added to your articles Old links. Refer to Old links for more information.
1. If you don't want to add the previous permalink as an old link, select No thanks.
If you selected to add the previous permalink as an old link, that's added.

To update a category permalink or an article permalink in the old article editor:

Open the article for editing.
Edit the permalink directly in the permalink text box:
Sample valid permalink edit
1. If your permalink is invalid, review the Invalid new permalink information below for explanations of error messages and how to fix them.
Save your changes.
A modal opens asking if you'd like to add the previous permalink as an old link. Select Yes to add it or No to skip this step. Refer to Old links for more information.
Your permalink is updated.

Invalid new permalink

We'll prevent you from saving an invalid permalink and provide an explanation of why the permalink is invalid so you can remedy it.

Here are some examples of the invalid permalink feedback you might receive and how to resolve them.

Reserved URL

You'll receive this message if the permalink you're trying to use is something KnowledgeOwl reserves for one of our features:

URL is reserved for KnowledgeOwl functionality. Please choose a different URL.

Sample reserved URL error message. Note that the Save button is disabled.

To resolve this issue, make a small tweak to the permalink, like adding another word, removing a dash, or adding a number.

Invalid characters

You'll receive this message if the permalink you're trying to use contains characters that aren't supported in URLs, such as uppercase letters, spaces, some punctuation marks, and special characters:

URLs can only include lower-case letters, numbers, and dashes.

Sample invalid characters error message. Note that the Save button is disabled.

To resolve this issue, remove any characters that aren't lowercase letters, numbers, or dashes.

Permalink already in use

You'll receive this message if the permalink you're trying to use is already being used for an active category or for an article in any of the Draft or Published publishing statuses:

URL is already in use. Please choose a different URL.

Sample already in use error message. Note that the Save button is disabled.

To resolve this issue, you may need to update the URL of that other page, or make a slight tweak to this URL so it's not a full duplicate.

Old link

You'll receive this message if the permalink you're trying to use is already added as an Old link for this page, which would create an infinite loop of redirects:

You cannot set the current permalink to an existing redirect link.