Permalink trouble

Hi, was hoping someone would be able to help.

Bit of a WordPress newbie but loving it so far and I’ve tried to look this up as much as poss before posting so please do bear with me.

I’ve recently created a portfolio-style site at liammckinnon.com using the theme Portfolium by WPShower. Really good theme, but I’m having a little trouble with the permalinks.

The theme generates a homepage which uses thumbnail images to link to a number of portfolio pages. These portfolio pages are different to standard WordPress pages and it seems to be affecting the permalink structure. The portfolio page permalinks go like this: http://liammckinnon.com/?portfolio=nameofwork. I am fine with the way these urls read, it’s tidy enough.

However, I also have a couple of standard pages in my header navigation, such as a ‘contact’ page and my blog page. These are NOT portfolio pages, they are standard pages. (I hope I am explaining this ok…)

I would like these contact and blog pages to have clean and tidy permalinks, for example liammckinnon.com/blog and liammckinnon.com/contact. However, I have tried every permalink structure option that WordPress provides, and anything that does generate a tidy permalink (/contact or /blog) messes up my portfolio pages (ie changes them to the same structure and hence gives a 404 page).

I guess what I’m trying to do, is create a permalink rule which will tidy up my contact and blog pages (standard pages), but won’t affect my portfolio pages. You will see what I mean once you’ve seen the site.

I feel that the coding for this may be a bit beyond me, so if anyone knows a way I can tidy up my page urls without affecting the portfolio pages, I’d be massively grateful.

Thanks in advance.