You don’t really have to “touch” the post slugs fro permalink.
Go to Options > Permalinks… READ very carefully what is on the page, select your permalink structure (i.e. write it in the field for the “virtual site structure”; then click Update Permalink Structure. Below you’ll find the lines that you need to copy into your .htaccess file. Copy, save, upload.
Yes, apache mod_rewrite is necessary for using “nice” permalinks. E.g. instead of
http://www.unspace.net/wordpress/index.php?p=75.
something like http://www.unspace.net/wordpress/archives/10/25/2004/380-tons
I’ll add that though WordPress generated links on your site would point to the ‘nice’ ones if you change it, old style permalinks continue to work. So if anyone has linked to you previously, have no concern.
And there is a way to use custom permalinks without mod_rewrite, as mentioned on the Permalink Options page in WordPress:
In general for this you must use mod_rewrite, however if you put a filename at the beginning WordPress will attempt to use that to pass the arguments, for example:
/index.php/archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
Post slugs work with nicer permalinks only. It allows you to specify the last bit of your permalink, that is, something in place of the default which is the post name. I, myself use post slugs for all my posts on my blog.
Thanks. I think I understand most of this now. What I’m still not clear on is what would happen to the old permalinks if I change to a new system.
Does it update the old permalinks, or would it leave the previous ones alone and only create “nice” permalinks for the new ones?
Thanks!
Rob
Not sure what you mean by “old permalinks”. If you refer to the (perma)link in the title of older posts – then the answer is: the rewrite rules apply to your whole blog! All the permalinks will behave the same, i.e. will have the same structure since the permalink structure is not stored or “hardcoded” anywhere. So, whenever you change your permalink structure it will apply to the whole site.
Ya, everything is dynamic in WP, so both the forms of URL would be generated on request.
“And as I mentioned above, “old style permalinks continue to work.”
Yep. You said it, I missed it. Dain bramage. Sorry about that, chief!
Thanks to all.
I’m going to make the change as soon as I do a complete backup. I’m not paranoid. I’ve simply learned from my mistakes.
