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Recovering A Deleted Page Or Post, Chapter 3

We've been advising anxious blog owners, for some time, how to recover deleted pages and posts.

The easiest solution, in the long run, is to recover the PageID / PostID, and re publish the deleted page / post.

Unfortunately, all deleted pages and posts can't be edited and re published. With new posts, un indexed by the search engines, you won't be able to find the post in cache - and you'll never determine the PostID. This will be a frequent problem with deleted pages - as static pages generally won't get indexed by the search engines - nor will they ever be included in the blog posts feed.

In some cases, even when you know the PageID or PostID, the page editor / post editor may simply reject your attempt to re edit - and give you another bX code.

Even so, all is not lost. You may have to rebuild the page or post - but you can generally keep the URL, of the deleted page or post, operational. Just plan the rebuilding process.

In cases where a deleted page or post can't be simply re published, you can publish a replacement page or post - and redirect both your readers, and the search engines, from the URL of the deleted page / post, to the replacement page or post.

To minimise loss of reader and search engine reputation, you'll want to publish a replacement page / post as soon as possible after the old page / post is mistakenly deleted. With replacement posts published in the same month as the original - and with all pages - this can cause the well known ugly URL suffix, to prevent a duplicate URL.

When you publish a replacement page or post, you have one chance to get the title and URL right - and prevent the ugly URL suffix. The one chance ends, when you hit the "Publish" button.

With a deleted post, you can use the Custom Permalink option ("Permalink", under "Post settings", in the post editor window) to make the published URL slightly different from the default. Alternately, you'll need to deliberately choose a slightly different Title, for the replacement post.

When you publish a replacement page, you won't have a "Custom Permalink" option. Your only option, in this case, is to choose a slightly different Title, for the replacement Page.

Static page URLs do not contain the year and month of publishing, so you'll need to use a different Title for every replacement page - even if you publish the replacement in a later month, or even a later year. Since static pages are generally not as widely publicised as posts, the different title should still be preferable to the alternative - the ugly page URL suffix.

Just choose the title and URL carefully, before you hit "Publish", to prevent long term embarrassment. And having published the replacement, setup a Custom Redirect, to keep the URL of the deleted page or post operational.

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