Natural URL Design and static front page

Question

A static front page and other pages which are children of it are used on a blog. To give an example:

www.example.com

The slug for that page shows up in the permalink for sub pages like www.example.com/long-slug-from-static-front-page/sub-page-slug.html.

The question now is how to make the URL Design more natural? Since the parent page is the frontpage, it's slug should be the sites homepage-URL (e.g. none as in http://www.example.com/) but the static pages slug is added instead.

I smell that this is a shortcoming in WordPress, any ideas?

I was asked to make the scenario more concrete by an Illustration because it was quite akward describben. Sorry. Aim is to use WordPress as a CMS to reflect the following structure (please not the other way round):

Illustration:

Logical Data and it's Structure:

• Start
  • Blue
  • Red
    • Dark Red
    • Light Red
    • Burned Red
  • Yellow

Mapping of Data to Pages:

• Start: Home-Page
  • Blue: Blue-Page
  • Red: Red-Page
    • Dark Red: Dark Red-Page
    • Light Red: Light Red-Page
    • Burned Red: Burned Red-Page
  • Yellow: Yellow-Page

URL Layout:

• Home-Page: http://example.com/
  • Blue-Page: http://example.com/blue/
  • Red-Page: http://example.com/red/
    • Dark Red-Page: http://example.com/red/dark/
    • Light Red-Page: http://example.com/red/light/
    • Burned Red-Page: http://example.com/red/burned/
  • Yellow-Page: http://example.com/yellow/

Is WordPress the tool for the job? Or does using page hierarchy and static front-page contradicts the URL layout?

Answer 1

WordPress does have a way of doing what you want. Make them all top level pages. Unless you have a good reason not to.

Answer 2

Not exactly, WordPress determines it's query from the URL structure, so:

www.example.com/my-sub-page/ would be the exact same structure as www.example.com/my-other-top-level-page, so WordPress would have no way to tell if you are looking for a subpage or a top level page.

Having said that, I don't think WordPress lets you have the same slug for a sub level page and a top level page - so there shouldn't be a reason. If you require that permalink structure, why not just have your "sub pages" as top level pages. If you want them to be at www.example.com/my-sub-page/ then it sounds like they are pretty 'top level' anyway.

Answer 3

Your sub-pages should NOT be children of the 'homepage'. I know people draw sitemaps like that but it's really not how it works.

So you have:

Example.com (using static front page 'home') Example.com/about (a top level page, NOT a child of 'home')

There are no SEO or User experience problems from this approach, it is how most CMS sites are done.