# Permalink management
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [April 11, 2019, 11:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815 "2019-04-11T23:53:38Z")
**Posts on this page:** 7
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Mark\_Walkom](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mark_Walkom)
#### Post date: [April 11, 2019, 11:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815/1 "2019-04-11T23:53:38Z")
It’d be really great if the permalink management section had the option for free text searching to find the category/topic ID. Currently I’ve been using `site.json` to find the category ID, and it’s a little clunky.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 12, 2019, 11:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815/2 "2019-04-12T11:42:34Z")
What is it that you are trying to do?
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### Author:  [@Mark\_Walkom](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mark_Walkom)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 4:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815/3 "2019-04-13T04:03:03Z")
Add permalinks a little easier.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 4:20am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815/4 "2019-04-13T04:20:15Z")
I meant something like why are you adding permalinks? How many are you adding? Did you do an import? What is the source of the permalinks? They are useful only for incoming links, so there should be a way to automate adding them. That is why the ux for adding them is so bad. It’s usually the worst way to add them.
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### Author:  [@Mark\_Walkom](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mark_Walkom)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 10:15am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815/5 "2019-04-13T10:15:50Z")
We’ve been making a few changes and re/moving categories. There’s not a heap of them, maybe 30.
Doing them via the API is only really going to make it a whole bunch harder than it already is.
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 12:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815/6 "2019-04-13T12:08:33Z")
That’s why I wanted to know more about what you were trying to do. Renaming a category automatically creates a permalink. But if you’re deleting them you do need to create one manually.
[https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-a-category-is-renamed-the-previous-url-should-redirect-to-the-new-one/15528/37?u=pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-a-category-is-renamed-the-previous-url-should-redirect-to-the-new-one/15528/37)
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### Author:  [@Mark\_Walkom](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mark_Walkom)
#### Post date: [April 13, 2019, 12:21pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/permalink-management/114815/7 "2019-04-13T12:21:11Z")
Ahh ok! 🙂 The auto creation makes sense, but maybe that should be listed in with the other permalinks so it’s explicit?
However it’d still be great if the manual creation was a little easier. As per the OP, using category ID and not the text version is painful.