WordPress Links Broken Proper Permalink Settings

Posted by Jeff

on February 6, 2009

Using a custom permalink structure in WordPress is something that should be configured when setting up a new WordPress blog. If you are new to WordPress you will find it quite easy to change the permalink structure within the WordPress dashboard. However what can be a bit overwhelming is making changes on your blogs hosting account to allow for some of these settings.

There are a number of different WordPress permalinks options that can be used, but this post is not to continue the argument over what custom structure is best. I will say that using a category or the post title to add a few keywords to the WordPress URL might help a bit with SEO. So study what permalink tags are available and decide for yourself.

If you have an established WordPress blog you should not change the permalinks! Doing so will change the URL of your posts and any links pointing to them from other websites will be broken. Changing the WordPress permalink structure is done under the Settings module in the dashboard. Click the Permalinks menu and choose your structure, or click the link given in this area: “A number of tags are available” and learn more about what can be used.

After you choose your permalink structure click the Save Changes button and wait for the page to reload, check to see if the warning shown in the image below appears:

permalink3

If you see the warning to update your .htaccess file then you will need to take another step to get your permalinks to work correctly and more instructions are shown further down in the permalink dashboard menu. One choice is to make the .htaccess file (if you have one) writable. With either an FTP client or in the hosting account control panel change the file permissions on the .htaccess file to 777 but take note of the permissions before you change them so you can restore them. Then, and this part is important, go back to the WordPress dashboard and click the Save Changes button again to update the permalink structure. Then test the permalinks by opening a post from the blogs main page. If they work don’t forget to change the file permissions of the .htaccess file back to the original settings.

If you don’t have a .htaccess file then you will need to create one on your hosting account. You can create an .htaccess file several ways. One is to try within the file manager in the control panel on the hosting account. Another is to scroll down to the bottom of the permalink menu and copy the code shown in the box. Paste the code into a new text document and save it as a text file of any name on your computer. Then FTP the file into your WordPress directory, and change the name to .htaccess. After you add the .htaccess file with the correct file permissions make sure to update the permalink settings by clicking the Save Changes button in the dashboards permalink menu.

permalink4

If you are using Yahoo Small Business hosting (my condolences), then forget it, you can’t use custom permalinks this way, as of the time of this post anyway. There are also a few other hosting options out there that won’t allow an .htaccess file either. So if the server settings deny your adding one then you might be stuck with the default permalink settings.

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Customize Wordpress

Tags: Customize Wordpress, wordpress-permalinks

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Comments

Comment by Free Xbox 360 on February 6, 2009 @ 4:09 pm

thats happened to me a few times

glad to see you’ve worked out a fix

Comment by Aluminium Railings on February 12, 2009 @ 8:37 am

Thanks for posting nice pieces of advice, improvement is always great

Comment by Offshore dedicated team on March 2, 2009 @ 11:15 am

Thanks a lot for giving this information and even showing it on the pictures. It really helped me.

Comment by Home Accents on March 2, 2009 @ 2:59 pm

When you think there is no place with an answer for your problems, you can check here and you’ll find lots of information that really helps.

Comment by Noel Ferguson on March 23, 2009 @ 5:52 pm

Thanks for your post. There is always something I forget when setting up WordPress… duh…

Comment by jiltin on March 30, 2009 @ 10:46 pm

You have given the enough warning abut changing the permalinks. Is there any solutions to fix it? I got this mess some where during my many upgrades between wp 2.1 to 2.7.1. Some of my old permalinks are broken. whenever I identify the links are broken, I am manually recreating them. Is this the only way left with?

Comment by Kevin Douglas on August 11, 2009 @ 10:54 pm

Thanks, Jeff. Your post saved my website. I thought I was gonna have to start from scratch and redo the site. After I followed your detailed directions, I was able to redirect my links. Thanks again!

Comment by joomla extensions on August 29, 2009 @ 10:14 pm

Thanks for the tip. I never knew even such things existed. Appreciate the effort. Thanks

Drive-By comments will be deleted! Like "Thanks for sharing", "Nice post", or any other text that doesn't contribute to the discussion. If you ask a very specific question about your particular WordPress theme, it will probably be deleted. I can fix your WordPress site but for a price. If you ask a question like "Why don't my blog work right", it will be deleted. If you ask a question about your WordPress site without a leaving a link to it, it will be deleted. The point is to ask questions and or comment on the the actual content of the post, and to please use some common sense. All comments are moderated and will appear when approved. Thank you.