Pinyin Slugs

Chinese characters don't come out good in permalinks. Without the Pinyin Slugs plugin activated, the example post I made for the screenshot will get a slug like this: %e6%90%9c%e7%b4%a2%e5%bc%95%e6%93%8e%e4%bc%98%e5%8c%96. With the plugin the slug automatically becomes sousuoyinqingyouhua. Search engines such as Baidu cannot make much of the first slug, but they can handle pinyin perfectly, especially when it is written as one long string without hyphens or underscores. It is possible to limit the amount of characters in the slug. The default is 100, which should be plenty for most. The Pinyin Slugs plugin was forked from the Pinyin Permalinks plugin by user xiaole_tao as that project seemed abandoned. There have been many improvements since; read the changelog for details. I have decided to only support this plugin through Github. Therefore, if you have any questions, need help and/or want to make a feature request, please open an issue over at Github. You can also browse through open and closed issues to find what you are looking for and perhaps even help others. PLEASE DO NOT POST YOUR ISSUES VIA THE WORDPRESS FORUMS Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

WordPress Search for "Pinyin Slugs" and install with the Plugins > Add New back-end page. … OR … Follow these steps:

1. Download zip file.
2. Upload the zip file via the Plugins > Add New > Upload page … OR … unpack and upload with your favorite FTP client to the /plugins/ folder.
3. Activate the plugin on the Plugins page.

Done!

WPML Compatible The Pinyin Slugs plugin has received the WPML Certification of Compatibility and is featured on the WPML website with the article How to Build a WordPress Website in China and Reach an International Audience.

2.3.9

• date: August 18, 2026
• Fixed: Settings link on the Plugins page was conflicting with other plugins

2.3.8

• date: August 16, 2026
• Fixed: replaced __FILE__ with a plain text slug (so-pinyin-slugs) for the settings page, as using __FILE__ for menu slugs risks exposing the filesystem structure (Plugin Check warning)
• Fixed: updated the Settings link on the Plugins page to match the new page slug
• Improved: the Settings link now hooks into plugin_action_links_{plugin_file} instead of the global plugin_action_links filter, so the callback no longer runs for every other plugin row
• Improved: internationalised the page title and menu title of the settings page
• Improved: removed obsolete hidden action and page_options form fields, which are already handled by settings_fields()
• Improved: added a fallback value for the slug length field to prevent a PHP notice when the option is missing
• Fixed: corrected the for attribute of the Slug Length label so it matches the input's id
• tested up to WP 7.1

2.3.7

• date: January 23, 2026
• fix PHP 8+ warning by aligning pinyin dictionary global variable name issue 31

2.3.6

• date: January 12, 2026
• add escaping functions to output
• tested up to WP 6.9

2.3.5

• date: April 27, 2025
• removed redundant load_plugin_textdomain() function and increased min required WP version
• tested up to WP 6.8

2.3.4

• date: March 11, 2025
• fix issue27 thanks for the PR @yabwee
• tested up to WP 6.7

2.3.3

• date: July 9, 2024
• add new $autoload parameter (WP 6.6)
• tested up to WP 6.6
• removed logo from Settings page

2.3.2

• date: November 27, 2023
• last security fix introduced problem where spaces in Title where no longer replaced by hyphens, this version brings back those hyphens (issue 23 thanks for pointing it out @nhimthaoan)

2.3.1

• date: November 23, 2023
• security fix CVE-2023-47511 Cross Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability (issue 22 thanks for pointing it out @ramiror)

2.3.0

• date: August 27, 2023
• fix Slug Length function (issue 19 thanks for reporting @zhouLife)

2.2.1

• date: October 25, 2022
• edits in readme files and on Settings page

2.2.0

• date: September 16, 2020
• dictionary update: UniHan database using the kMandarin Reading field as pinyin phonetic keys (https://unicode.org/charts/unihan.html); with many thanks to Yun-yu Shen @ujamer
• edits in readme files and on Settings page

2.1.4

• date: October 29, 2018
• tested up to WP 5.0
• tested up to ClassicPress 1.0.0

2.1.3

• date: July 8, 2018
• tested up to WP 4.9.7

2.1.2

• date: March 15, 2017
• add sanitize_title filter once the file has been included as per suggestion of Polylang author @Chouby
• tidying up

2.1.1

• date: November 29, 2016
• remove version check
• tested up to WP 4.7

2.1.0

• date: March 10, 2016
• fix to not ignore alphanumerical characters by vanabel, closes issue #4

2.0.4

• date: August 7, 2015
• TWEAK: header settings page; only showed half logo after 2.0.3 update

2.0.3

• date: August 5, 2015
• changed header settings page to h1 (https://make.wordpress.org/plugins/2015/08/03/4-3-change-to-plugin-dashboard-pages/)
• show 4.3 compatibility

2.0.2

• date: June 19, 2015
• revert to semantic versioning

2.0.1

• date: April 9, 2015
• changed logos
• new banner image for WP.org Repo by Joschko Hammermann

2.0.0

• date: July 29, 2014
• due to non-compatibility issues with WP 4.0, complete rewrite of the plugin from the ground up
• bump minimum required WP version up to 3.8

1.0.1

• date: December 28, 2013
• fix reported bug that causes entire admin to be a maximum width of 48rem

1.0.0

• date: December 26, 2013
• tested up to WP 3.9-alpha
• settings page overhaul to better match WP 3.8 style
• change version number format
• change links

0.1.3

• change text domain to prepare for language packs (via Otto - http://otto42.com/el)

0.1.2

• compatible up to WordPress 3.7
• redo version check, min. requirement WordPress 3.6
• change Github link
• add Dutch language files
• add WPML accreditation

0.1.1

• separate dictionary.php file
• add Mandarin Chinese language files
• edit readme.txt and readme.md
• fix textdomain issue

0.1

• First stable release