How to make Pretty Permalinks in Wordpress

What are pretty permalinks? A permalink is a basically the direct URL to your page or post within your blog. By default these are given an ID number that displays something like this “http://yourblog.com/?p=845″. This is definitely something that you might want to consider changing if only because it makes the address for your individual pages and posts easier to remember.

In order to do this you will need to change the permalinks settings in your Wordpress admin panel as well as modifying the .htaccess in the root folder where your blog files are located. This is the place where you dropped in the files you downloaded from wordpress.org.

An .htaccess file is basically a little text file that sits in your folder and dictates directions about the structure of URLs within your site. You can google “.htaccess” to learn more. These files are usually invisible so you will need to enable viewing of invisible files on your FTP client. In Cyberduck, which I use, you can do this in the top menu by going to View > Show Hidden Files.

Once you open the .htaccess file you will need to paste the following code into it:


# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress


Once you do this, save the file and close it. Then go into your Wordpress admin section and navigate to the Settings>Permalinks section. Once here, select the 5th option from the top “Custom Structure” and paste the following into the text field:

/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%/

Once you’ve done this save the settings and test it out on your blog. You should be good to go!