Title: Creating a (dynamic!) static site
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Creating a (dynamic!) static site

 *  [trailerparkboy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/trailerparkboy/)
 * (@trailerparkboy)
 * [17 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/)
 * Hi Folks,
 * I’ve been searching through the support forums for an answer to my question but
   either can’t find it or am getting confused even further. Here’s what I’d like
   to do:
 * I need to take an existing website (say 60 or 70 pages) and place it into WordPress.
   The reason I will be using WordPress is so that additional pages can be added
   easily to the site using specific templates. As well, updating content every 
   now and then by non-technical folks should theoretically be easier. Lastly, we’ll
   be adding a blog to the site – obviously this works well.
 * So I have a structure something like the following:
 * **Products**
    Product 1 Product 2 Service 1 ETC
 * **About**
    Careers Team ETC
 * **Solutions**
    Showcase 1 Showcase 2 ETC
 * **ETC**
 * When I create Pages (capital P – as opposed to posts) I get some ugly looking
   URLs. I’d like to prettify them so that they have some meaning (they don’t have
   to be RESTful … but they should have some kind of logic to them). So for eg:
 * [http://www.mydomain.com/about/careers/](http://www.mydomain.com/about/careers/)
 * I thought I could use categories but I can’t find a way to make them apply to
   Pages (must be missing something very obvious?). Is there another accepted or
   common way of doing this? I think I want to use Pages as these are technically
   static content (but with the option of updating them from time to time). Using
   a single post per category seems counter-intuitive but perhaps that’s the way
   the system works?
 * Any help appreciated.
 * Thanks

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

 *  [tgiokdi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/tgiokdi/)
 * (@tgiokdi)
 * [17 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932383)
 * what kind of ‘ugly looking urls’ are you getting? Regardless, you can change 
   the way the urls look in the ‘Settings -> Permalinks’ section.
 * I wouldn’t use posts for static content, I’d go with what you were suggesting
   and use pages, having them nested under the ones that you want them to be under.
 *  Thread Starter [trailerparkboy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/trailerparkboy/)
 * (@trailerparkboy)
 * [17 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932480)
 * Hi tgiokdi,
 * By ‘ugly’ I mean [http://www.domain.com/?page_id=###](http://www.domain.com/?page_id=###).
   When I create traditional sites I use folders on the file system to create heirarchy
   and meaning in the url (obviously more than one way to achieve this). It’s this
   memorable, human readable url that I’m going after.
 * I looked into ‘Settings -> Permalinks’ but I guess I’m missing something simply
   about how to use the setting. Do I want ‘Custom Structure’? If so, what do I 
   specify in the text input? Feeling pretty dense about it but I’m just not sure
   how to configure it.
 * Thanks
 *  [Dave333](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dave333/)
 * (@dave333)
 * [17 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932481)
 * in the custom structure field type this:
 * %postname%
 * At least that is what I typed into mine but having just checked it seems that
   after I upgraded to 2.7 its been changed automatically to this:
 * /%postname%/
 * Not sure why the change or what difference it makes but you could try both and
   se which one works for you.
 *  Thread Starter [trailerparkboy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/trailerparkboy/)
 * (@trailerparkboy)
 * [17 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932482)
 * Thanks Dave – I’ll give this a try in the morning and see how it goes.
 *  [reflexionstudios](https://wordpress.org/support/users/reflexionstudios/)
 * (@reflexionstudios)
 * [17 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932485)
 * Permalinks is the answer to your pretty URLs question. The admin section has 
   some default options which look fine, or as Dave333 said, you can customize how
   they look.
 * As for the pages and sub-pages, create a parent level page, then create a child
   page and set it’s parent to whatever is above it.
 *  Thread Starter [trailerparkboy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/trailerparkboy/)
 * (@trailerparkboy)
 * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932514)
 * Ok so I think this is coming together for me. Thanks for the help so far. I have
   enabled /%postname%/ and all links on the blog/site have become just that. Great.
   Now I read at
 * [http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#Using_.22Pretty.22_permalinks](http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#Using_.22Pretty.22_permalinks)
 * that I have to enable mod_rewrite in order for this to actually work. As of now
   I get
 * > Not Found
   > The requested URL /apps/domain.com/blah-page-title/ was not found on this server.
 * I’ll follow these instructions and see what happens. I guess what threw me in
   the beginning was the name %postname% … I had taken that literally instead of
   applying it to both posts AND pages.
 * Thanks
 *  [Hiranthi](https://wordpress.org/support/users/illutic/)
 * (@illutic)
 * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932518)
 * The %postname% is for pages and posts (I always set it up as %category%/%postname%/).
 * If mod_rewrite isn’t enabled, you can also use index.php/%postname%/ (instead
   of just %postname%). This way the pretty urls are parsed with PHP instead of 
   through an .htaccess file.
 *  Thread Starter [trailerparkboy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/trailerparkboy/)
 * (@trailerparkboy)
 * [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932522)
 * Hi illutic,
 * Thanks for the clarification. Ok, so I got it working as both
 * > index.php/%postname%/
 * and
 * > /%postname%/
 * using mod_rewrite. For completeness sake here’s what i did with Apache:
    1. LoadModule mod_rewrite
    2. added the following Directory directive:
    3.     ```
           <Directory "/path/to/site/root">
             AllowOverride All
             Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews
             Order allow,deny
             Allow from all
           </Directory>
           ```
       
 * Worked like a charm.
 * I appreciate all the help.
 * Jason

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

The topic ‘Creating a (dynamic!) static site’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 8 replies
 * 5 participants
 * Last reply from: [trailerparkboy](https://wordpress.org/support/users/trailerparkboy/)
 * Last activity: [17 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/creating-a-static-site/#post-932522)
 * Status: not resolved

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