This article...

Describes permalinks and how a Contact.Permalink appears in profile and blog URLs.
Explains that name changes do not auto-update blog permalinks and why updating blog URLs prevents broken links.
Details the Update Permalink tool, including locating Contacts and the option to update blog URLs.
Provides several scenarios to improve your understanding of how the tools works.

NOTE: This article references blogs and blog articles. Depending on your product model, you might see news and news articles in your site. These are different names for the same feature and references to "blogs" and "blog articles" in this article are also applicable to "news" and "news articles".

As a Super Admin, you can, optionally, update a Contact's personal permalink to reflect a name change.

Further, with the Update Permalink tool in the Admin interface, you also have the option to update that Contact's name in their blog permalinks (i.e., the Contact.Permalink portion of the blog's link).

NOTE: Being able to update this in Admin means that you do not have to request assistance from Higher Logic Support.

Name changes in your community

In your community, a name change can occur as the result of:

a Super Admin updating the name via the Edit button on the Users > List page. This is the process in an HL-managed community.

Or...

the name being changed in an external, integrated database and that record then being synced over to Higher Logic. This is the process in an AMS-managed community.

To learn about the differences, see Understand How Communities Are Managed.

When a Contact's name is changed — by either of the above methods — the Contact's name in their blog permalinks is not automatically updated. The Update Permalink tool is used only after a Contact's name has changed; it is not used to change a name.

Why update a Contact's permalink after a name change?

If you update a Contact's permalink without also updating the Contact's blogs, those blogs:

remain associated to the Contact and
remain visible in the Contact's profile.

Higher Logic associates blogs and other user-generated content to Contacts by the Contact's unique identifier, their Contact Key. So, a Contact's blogs remain associated to the Contact irrespective of the permalink.

You might want to update a Contact's personal permalink:

in order to ensure that the Contact's profile link reflects the Contact's correct/preferred name.

Refer to Understand permalinks, below, for more information.

Understand permalinks

This section provides information on what permalinks are and how they function in order to provide context for the Update Permalink tool.

IMPORTANT: A change to any portion of a blog permalink nullifies the original link. Bookmarks and saved links to the blog's original link will not redirect the user to the blog with the now-updated permalink.

In a Higher Logic community, all Contacts who have created a blog have a Contact.Permalink, which is included in the URL of their profile, as in:

https://hug.higherlogic.com/people/robert-marley

When a Contact creates a blog in the community, their Contact.Permalink is automatically inserted as part of the blog's permalink (i.e., its URL), as in:

https://hug.higherlogic.com/blogs/robert-marley/2025/09/10/release-notes

...where the "2025/09/10/release-notes" is the creation date and blog title.

Every blog permalink contains the Contact.Permalink of the person who created the blog.

Example

Robert Marley creates his first blog, One Love. As a result:

he gets a permalink, robert-marley, and
the blog's permalink resembles robert-marley/2025/07/07/one-love.

If Robert Marley changes his name, the permalink in the One Love blog (and in any other of Robert Marley's blogs) does not automatically update.

This is where the Update Permalink tool comes in: Super Admins can use the tool to update a Contact.Permalink value in a Contact's blogs.

Find a Contact's unique identifiers

You can update a Contact's blog permalink by searching on one of the following three values:

Email Address - which can be retrieved from the Email column on the Users > List page.
Contact Key - which can be retrieved from the Admin tab of the Contact's Profile.
Integration Key - which can be retrieved from the Admin tab of the Contact's Profile and from the Contact's Preview Panel on the Users > List page.

Update a permalink

This section describes how to locate a community user and then update their Contact.Permalink value.

IMPORTANT: During the permalink-update process, Admins have the option to also update the Contact's other blogs. Higher Logic recommends that you review the information in Update All Blogs Associated to Contact setting, below, to fully understand the affect of this setting before proceeding with the permalink update.

In the Admin Toolbar, click Admin.

Navigate to Users > Tools > Update Permalink.

The Update Permalink page displays.

Type or paste the email address, Integration Key, or Contact Key and click Find Contact.

If the specified Contact:
- is not found, an error message displays; check what you've specified and try again.
- has not created any blogs, the Contact to Update section displays, but:
  - Current Permalink does not have a value;
  - Number of Blogs Associated with Contact has a value of 0; and
  - the Update All Blogs Associated to Contact checkbox and the Update Permalink button are not enabled.
- has created at least one blog, the Contact to Update section displays as shown below.

The Contact to Update section is populated with the Contact's information:

Things to note

Verify that the information is what you expected and is the intended Contact.
Note the value of Current Permalink; this is the value that will be updated.
Note the total number of blogs that will be updated as indicated by Number of Blogs Associated with Contact.
If the Contact's blog are associated to different Contact.Permalinks:
- an additional count, Number of Blogs Created with Current Permalink, displays and
- radio buttons display instead of the "Update All Blogs..." checkbox.
- Refer to Blogs are associated to different Contact.Permalinks, below, for information on how the different options work.

Accept the default setting of Update All Blogs Associated to Contact or uncheck the box to bypass updates to other blog permalinks.

NOTE: If you are unclear about the affect of this setting, refer to Update All Blogs Associated to Contact setting, below, before proceeding.

Click Update Permalink.

The page refreshes and a confirmation briefly displays at the top of the page.

The section now displays as Updated Blogs with a list of the blogs that have been updated.

Update All Blogs Associated to Contact setting

This section describes how to use the "Update All Blogs..." setting and the affects of doing so.

If the "Update All Blogs..." box is checked, the system will update the URLs of the Contact's blogs to reflect the updated Contact.Permalink.

NOTE: When this happens, the original URLs of those blogs are now "dead links." Therefore, you should locate any instances of the original blog that are referenced in content items or hard-coded somewhere on/off the community site and revise those URLs to include the new Contact.Permalink.

The "Update All Blogs..." setting

If the setting is not enabled (the box is not checked) and the Update Permalink tool is run:

only the Contact's Contact.Permalink is updated (in the community) for their Profile.

If the setting is enabled (the box is checked) and the Update Permalink tool is run:

the Contact's Contact.Permalink is updated (in the community) for their Profile and for all of their blogs.

NOTE: Blog URLs are updated based on the current Contact.Permalink value at the time the tool is run. Running the Update Permalink tool a subsequent time with the "Update All Blogs..." box checked will not update any blogs that were created under the original Contact.Permalink from the first run. This is intentional.

The only blog URLs that will be updated are those that reference the current Contact.Permalink at the time the tool is run.

Scenarios

This section provides a number of example scenarios to help you understand how the tool behaves in a variety of possible, real-life use cases.

NOTE: Remember, if a Contact has not created any blogs, the Contact does not have a permalink to update and the Update Permalink tool serves no purpose.

For all of the following scenarios, assume that the Contact has created one or more blogs. The variations that manifest are based on the Contact.Permalink.

None of the blogs are associated to the current Contact.Permalink

The Contact has created blogs but:

none of the blogs are associated to them via their current Contact.Permalink and
some blogs are associated to them via a prior Contact.Permalink.

Assume that the tool was run on this Contact once before with the "Update All Blogs..." box unchecked. (The Super Admin might have returned in order to update those blogs after having fixed hard-coded links.)

Now, if you click Update Permalink and:

the "Update All Blogs..." box is checked, the tool updates the Contact.Permalink as necessary and updates all blogs with the new Contact.Permalink.
the "Update All Blogs..." box is unchecked, a message indicates that this Contact's Contact.Permalink is already up to date. The blogs' permalinks are not impacted.

Blogs are associated to the current Contact.Permalink only

The Contact has created blogs, all of which have the current Contact.Permalink (i.e., the tool has never been run on this Contact).