Since I started using WordPress in January/09, the whole permalinks thing has confused me – mainly because I didn’t spend the time to implement it correctly, but also partly because their documentation is confusing.

I dedicated some time today (ended up taking 10 minutes), to figure this out.

The default for WordPress URLs is http://www.iamshendy.ca?cat=10, or http://www.iamshendy.ca?p=12. This doesn’t fair well for users that want to  access your site directly and can’t remember what “cat” is, or which number “p” was supposed to be set to. More importantly – it prevents search engines from better indexing your content. If a link within your site appears as http://www.iamshendy.ca/fitness/ – a user will have a better chance of remembering it, and a search engine can now index the ‘fitness’ keyword for your site.

With the intro out of the way – here’s a few tips to consider while following through WordPress’ documentation

  1. Edit your Permalink Settings by accessing the “Settings” menu, and clicking “Permalinks”
  2. Don’t follow the pattern of the “Common Settings” in WordPress’s Permalink Settings
    image
    This was the biggest thing that was throwing me off. I had typed in

    http://www.iamshendy.ca/category/postname

    which according to their example – looks like it would work:
    image
    But on fact does not – you actually have to use the tags provided.

  3. Once you’ve entered your desired custom permalink – you’ll need to update your .htaccess file. This is a file that sits in the same directory as your index.php (usually the root of your site). Create this file, and upload it to your ftp server. Be sure to copy and paste everything that appears in the TextArea after you save:
    image

Hope this helps you out – email me if you have any questions.

Shendy.