Title: Permalinks
Last modified: August 31, 2016

---

# Permalinks

 *  [chelloveswine](https://wordpress.org/support/users/chelloveswine/)
 * (@chelloveswine)
 * [10 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/permalinks-234/)
 * Can someone walk me through how to change my permalinks from plain to post name.
   Once I do that it says I have to edit my .htaccess. Not sure how to do that. 
   Can anyone help?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  [MBWD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mbwd/)
 * (@mbwd)
 * [10 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/permalinks-234/#post-7094199)
 * Hi,
    Normally I would just do this by going to the Dashboard, then Settings–>
   Permalinks and selecting Post Name, then Update. However, that is for NEW sites.
   Do you have posts on this site already, or is it a new site? Be aware that if
   you update permalinks on a site with pre-existing posts, those URLs will change,
   so any links to them on other sites will no longer work.
 * If you find the Codex challenging, as many do, this link might also be helpful:
 * [http://www.wpexplorer.com/change-permalinks-wordpress/](http://www.wpexplorer.com/change-permalinks-wordpress/)
 *  Thread Starter [chelloveswine](https://wordpress.org/support/users/chelloveswine/)
 * (@chelloveswine)
 * [10 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/permalinks-234/#post-7094210)
 * Hi Thanks! it’s an already existing site with previously posted articles. That’s
   why I have to chance the .htaccess I’m assuming.
 *  [MBWD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mbwd/)
 * (@mbwd)
 * [10 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/permalinks-234/#post-7094242)
 * OK, there’s just two pieces from that article that I want to be extra sure to
   draw your attention to:
 * > Once you know which syntax you are going to use, it is time to go into the 
   > Permalinks menu of your dashboard and make the change. This will now update
   > all of your internal URLs with the new syntax. All of the internal links should
   > update correctly if they have been added as part of WordPress. Any manual links
   > may need to be updated.
   >  However, all links to your site from elsewhere will
   > now be completely broken and all the content indexed by search engines will
   > be incorrect.
 * and
 * > In the past you would have been required to add all of these redirects manually
   > to your .htaccess file on your web server. Thankfully, with WordPress there
   > are plugins that can take care of all of these things for you. To easily create
   > the redirects on your WordPress website I recommend the Simple 301 Redirects
   > plugin.
 * This plugin should remove the need to manually update the .htaccess file, one
   of the functions of which is to redirect users.
 * Please back your site up, especially the database, before you proceed.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Permalinks’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [permalink](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/permalink/)
 * [permalinks](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/permalinks/)
 * [post-name](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/post-name/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [MBWD](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mbwd/)
 * Last activity: [10 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/permalinks-234/#post-7094242)
 * Status: not resolved

## Topics

### Topics with no replies

### Non-support topics

### Resolved topics

### Unresolved topics

### All topics