Permalinks, Dreamweaver and The Future

Total noob here; tryin’ to do things as right as I can from the start. It’s a whole new language with many new concepts and considerations.

I understand that the default setting for permalinks is not the best choice because (among other reasons) search engines value what comes first in a URL.

Therefore, a site about earthquake prediction and preparedness would be worse-off with a page link that looks like:
http://localhost/doctoreq/wordpress/?page_id=861 rather than this:
http://localhost/doctoreq/wordpress/radiation/
Besides, the first one is ‘ugly.’

The code for this second URL is “/%year%/%postname%/”. That I have posting nothing yet I suppose is why there is not year in the permalink. That I have not posted might be why it’s so easy to still be able to change back and forth between permalink styles?

The conundrim begins with the current fact that Dreamweaver CS5 (which I can barely operate) has issues with WP’s permalinks. If you move away from the default permalinks, then DW will have errors saying it can’t find dymnamically related files and chokes on anything but the default “ugly” permalink.

So, I changed WP back to default even though I really want the “pretty” permalinks. I figure that maybe just before I “put” my files to the host, I might change the permalinks from “ugly” to “pretty.”

(1) Am I on-track with this line of reasoning?

(2) Is there a beter solution?

Obviously, the better solution would be some kind of a fix for the DW-WP incompatibility. More questions…please,

(3) Once I get my site up and running on the host, and am actually published (vs. locally published), can I make any further changes to the permalink, or are they, um, PERManent?

This came to mind as I am creating button/links from one page to another.

(4) If I change the permalinks under WP’s Settings, will the link buttons become broken?

(5) Is there a way to make links between pages (like the button can with my theme WITH the permalink) that does NOT use permalinks?

And, one almost unrelated noob question:

Right now, in the “pretty” mode, my site shows as:
http://localhost/doctoreq/wordpress/radiation/
Of course I want the Radiation page I am writing to ultimatly have this URL:
http://doctorEQ.com/radiation/

(6) Once I get the site to the host, will “wordpress” still be showing in the URL? (have I installed incorrectly?)

I am all ears, and thanks in advance.