When transferring a WordPress website from one location or domain to another, or changing from https: to http: your permalinks will probably stop working.

The standard solution for this from WordPress.org is to resave your permalinks as type: plain in the WordPress Admin Dashboard.

However, if you are transferring or replicating your website and databases non-manually, ie automatically using a shell script, then you may want to perform this action using the WP-CLI or WordPress WP Command Line Interface tool.

Here are the instructions for changing your permalinks using WP.

You need to install WP-CLI on your WordPress server first in order to use this method.

if your permalinks are set to plain, then you get this output:

root@asus:~# wp option get permalink_structure –path=/var/www/wordpress –allow-root

if they are set to postname, then you get this output:

root@asus:~# wp option get permalink_structure –path=/var/www/wordpress –allow-root

/%postname%/
root@asus:~#

so, you need to set the structure to nothing:

root@asus:~# wp option get permalink_structure –path=/var/www/wordpress –allow-root
/%postname%/
root@asus:~# wp option update permalink_structure ” ” –path=/var/www/wordpress –allow-root
Success: Updated ‘permalink_structure’ option.
root@asus:~# wp option get permalink_structure –path=/var/www/wordpress –allow-root

root@asus:~#

Note the result of 

wp option get permalink_structure

is now a blank line. This means that the permalinks have now been set to ” ” ie plain format.

So you need to add ” ” as the argument for the value in order to set the permalinks to plain.

I checked in wp dashboard – settings – permalinks

– and this is correct.