Title: htaccess file – permalinks
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# htaccess file – permalinks

 *  Resolved [eneles](https://wordpress.org/support/users/eneles/)
 * (@eneles)
 * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/htaccess-file-permalinks/)
 * Hi all,
 * I’ve been setting up a blog and recently went to change the permalink settings
   to the month and name value, and got the following error message:
 * _If your .htaccess file were writable, we could do this automatically, but it
   isn’t so these are the mod\_rewrite rules you should have in your .htaccess file._
 * I had a look into it an found I didn’t actually have a .htaccess file to write
   to at all. I then created a .htaccess file and inserted just the mod_rewrite 
   rules. I know virtually nothing about .htaccess files.
    **My question is…:**
 * Should I include other information in my .htaccess file? I really don’t know 
   what else should be in the file if anything. Are there things you should include
   simply for security? Whenever I search for information about .htaccess files 
   I come up with a list of things they _can_ do, but I don’t know if anything is
   actually neccessary?
 * If someone can point me in the right direction I’d really appreciate it.
 * Thanks

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  [Doodlebee](https://wordpress.org/support/users/doodlebee/)
 * (@doodlebee)
 * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/htaccess-file-permalinks/#post-1145633)
 * Sounds like you did the right thing (good for you, figuring that out all by yourself
   🙂 ). For future reference, if you don’t have an .htaccess file on the server,
   you can upload a blank file named .htaccess and set the permissions to 766. Do
   your permalink setting and WordPress will auto-write the stuff for you in the
   file. Once that’s done BE SURE you change the permissions back to 644 for security
   purposes.
 * As for “necessary” stuff – no. .htaccess is a nice little tool to use if you *
   want* to do things, but it’s not required. You can use .htaccess for all kinds
   of things, from rewriting permalinks, to preventing your images from getting 
   hotlinked to banning people from doing referer spam (among other things). It’s
   all neat stuff, but not required stuff. You usually end up figuring out what 
   it is you want to do in your .htaccess file when you get to a point where you
   want to do something specific – then find out you *can* with .htaccess 🙂
 * If you want to do security stuff – especially for your WordPress blog – you might
   want to read this: [Hardening WordPress](http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress)
 *  Thread Starter [eneles](https://wordpress.org/support/users/eneles/)
 * (@eneles)
 * [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/htaccess-file-permalinks/#post-1145837)
 * Thanks heaps!
 * Appreciate the response. 🙂

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘htaccess file – permalinks’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [htaccess](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/htaccess/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [eneles](https://wordpress.org/support/users/eneles/)
 * Last activity: [16 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/htaccess-file-permalinks/#post-1145837)
 * Status: resolved

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