WordPress Permalinks, the finishing touch

You can make the http:// links of your website more readable for visitors and also increase the chance to be found in search engines. Editing your permalinks is good for SEO purposes.
Edit the Permalinks of your website at your adminpanel beneath Settings > Permalinks. On this page, beneath Common settings you have 5 options. Let’s start of with an example. Click on Month and Name and see what happens.

You’ll see this structure appear beneath custom structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/

If you want your http:// link to resemble the page/post name you gave you’ll have add
the following structure under Custom Structure: /%postname%/

Your links will now appear like http://www.yoursite.com/contact etc.

After you have saved this and everything went well, your permalinks are working. But, if you get an error that tells your .htaccess is not write-able you have to follow these steps.

  • Copy & past the given code from WordPress
  • Open a text, edit program like, Notepad or TextEdit
  • Paste the given code from WordPress in the text file
  • Save it (it does not matter if it is saved as a .txt extension)
  • Upload the text file into the root directory where you’ve installed WordPress
  • Then rename it into .htaccess
  • When you rename it, please use any .txt/.doc extension or otherwise
  • Reload your admin panel and you will be up and running now

 

NOTE: If you still get an error follow the last steps because some extra code may still be in your .htaccess that can cause that WordPress can not read it properly.

  • Go to your ftp and locate the .htaccess [it may not be visible because it’s a hidden file].
  • In this case go to your preferences of your ftp and set show hidden files.
  • Now you you are to see the .htaccess file.
  • Click it and choose edit with Notepad, TextEdit or Dreamweaver etc.
  • Select and delete all code, then copy and past the code from WordPress
    that still is in your computers memory.
  • Save the file and you see a prompt of your ftp program saying ‘uploaded
    successfully’
  • Go and reload your admin panel and your site should be back and running
    with permalinks, the finishing touch