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Getting Started with Remove Special Characters From Permalinks

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To get started with Remove Special Characters From Permalinks (URLs) for WordPress, install and activate it from Plugins > Add New, confirm WooCommerce is active, then publish or update any post. The free version has no settings screen: it cleans the permalink every time you save. Pro adds Settings > Special Characters and Tools > Remove Characters.

What the plugin does #

WordPress builds a post’s URL slug from its title. Symbols such as a chain icon (⛓), emoji or other non-ASCII characters can end up in that slug, which makes URLs hard to read and can confuse third-party tools that cannot handle them. Remove Special Characters strips those characters from the slug when the post is saved, so the URL contains only plain letters, numbers, hyphens, underscores and dots.

  • Free: cleans the permalink of each post, page, product or custom post type item when you publish or update it.
  • Pro: adds a one-click tool that cleans every published permalink on the site at once, an optional forced redirect from old URLs to the new ones, and an email when the bulk run finishes. See Free vs Pro.

Before you start #

  • WordPress 4.4 or later and PHP 5.6 or later (from the plugin readme).
  • WooCommerce must be active. In the current builds (free 1.1.1, Pro 1.0.8) the plugin checks for WooCommerce when it loads and does nothing at all if WooCommerce is not active, even though it works on any post type. If you run a site without WooCommerce, contact support before relying on the plugin.
  • Pretty permalinks enabled in Settings > Permalinks (any structure other than Plain). With Plain permalinks, URLs use ?p=123 and slugs are not visible.
  • A recent database backup if you plan to change URLs that are already indexed by search engines.

Install the free version #

  1. Go to Plugins > Add New and search for Remove Special Characters From Permalinks, or download it from WordPress.org and upload the zip with Upload Plugin.
  2. Click Install Now, then Activate.
  3. That is all. There is no menu item or settings page in the free version. On the Plugins screen the plugin shows a Pro Version link.

Install Pro #

  1. Download the Pro zip from your WPFactory account.
  2. Go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugin, choose the zip, click Install Now and then Activate.
  3. Pro already contains the free plugin’s save-time cleanup, so you can deactivate the free version once Pro is active.
  4. On the Plugins screen, Pro adds two links: Settings (opens Settings > Special Characters) and Remove tool (opens Tools > Remove Characters).

Plugins screen row for Remove Special Characters from Permalinks Pro showing the Settings and Remove tool links

Check that it works #

  1. Create a test post with a title that contains a symbol or emoji, for example Summer Deals ⛓ 2026.
  2. Click Publish.
  3. Look at the permalink under the title (or in the post’s URL settings panel). The symbol is gone and the slug reads summer-deals-2026.
  4. Delete the test post when you are done.

Note: existing posts keep their current URLs until you update them. To clean all existing permalinks in one go, use the Pro tool described in How to Bulk Clean Special Characters from All WordPress Permalinks.

Next steps #

Get more control #

Save-time cleanup is free. Remove Special Characters From Permalinks (URLs) for WordPress Pro cleans every existing permalink with one click and can force redirects from the old URLs. See what Pro unlocks.

Need a hand? Our team answers every ticket on the Remove Special Characters support forum.