Title: PLEASE Help With Permalinks!!
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# PLEASE Help With Permalinks!!

 *  Anonymous
 * [21 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-help-with-permalinks/)
 * I am sooooooooooo frustrated with SEO CRAP!!!
    This is the 4th CMS system that
   I have tried, and the big reason I chose this is because of the apprent ease 
   of optimization by using the Permalinks feature. However, in searching the forums
   and reading the documentation, I have not found a STEP-BY-STEP tutorial for utilizing
   the Permalinks feature. I first started by reading through a dozen or so posts
   on the subject, and came away more confused than I started out. SO I decided 
   to try it on my own. This is a brand new clean install with no modifications 
   or even any posts except I added 3 categories. I then went to the Permalinks 
   tab, and since I had no success in finding a step-by-step explanation of how 
   to come up with the directory structure of choice, I copied and pasted the example
   structure: /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ And then I copied the
   output, pasted it into my .htaccess file, saved it and held my breath. I then
   clicked the View Site link and got an internal server error. It is an Apache 
   1.3.27 server with PHP 4.3.8 I have confirmed that mod_rewrite is INDEED installed
   on the server. I could not go anywhere on the site once I modified the .htaccess
   file with the suggested output, so I deleted the .htaccess, and modified the 
   structure like so: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ I then pasted the output
   into a new .htaccess file and tried again, but another internal server error.
   Please, someone, anyone, help me get through this! I have the feeling I am missing
   something that was not adequately described in the instructions. Thank you!!!!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

 *  Thread Starter Anonymous
 * [21 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-help-with-permalinks/#post-112535)
 * Also, I have another question. Why are some people’s .htaccess files so long 
   compared to others? I must be missing something here.
    Thanks again!
 *  [carthik](https://wordpress.org/support/users/carthik/)
 * (@carthik)
 * [21 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-help-with-permalinks/#post-112541)
 * Some use 1.2.x and some use 1.3
    My suggestion would be to use permalinks of 
   the type example.com/index.php/2004/04/03/the-post-name That is done without 
   any .htaccess modification, just by using index.php before the permalink string
   on the permalink options page. It works fully dependent on WP. No apache related
   problems. As far as search engines are concerned, it is as if you were storing
   your old posts in a directory called index.php, so they don’t frown on you. Good
   luck
 *  Thread Starter Anonymous
 * [21 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-help-with-permalinks/#post-112548)
 * Thank you!!!! THE reason I didn’t try the index.php option is because I thought
   it would look funny to google and other Search Engines, but if it has no effect
   on the SE’s then I will happily use that option!
 *  [danielck](https://wordpress.org/support/users/danielck/)
 * (@danielck)
 * [21 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-help-with-permalinks/#post-112605)
 * Cool down man! It took me 3 weeks to figure out Permalinks! 🙂
    You may want 
   to try my approach:
 * >  /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
 * Leave the Custom Prefix blank.
    Copy and paste the generated code into your .
   htaccess file.
 * >  RewriteEngine On
   >  RewriteBase / RewriteRule ^category/(.*)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2
   > |atom)/?$ /wp-feed.php?category_name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA] RewriteRule ^category/?(.*)/
   > index.php?category_name=$1 [QSA] RewriteRule ^author/(.*)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2
   > |atom)/?$ /wp-feed.php?author_name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA] RewriteRule ^author/?(.*)/
   > index.php?author_name=$1 [QSA] RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/?([0-9]{1,2})?/?([0-
   > 9]{1,2})?/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?([0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=
   > $3&name=$4&page=$5 [QSA] RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/?([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([
   > _0-9a-z-]+)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /wp-feed.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day
   > =$3&name=$4&feed=$5 [QSA] RewriteRule ^([0-9]{4})/?([0-9]{1,2})/([0-9]{1,2})/([
   > _0-9a-z-]+)/trackback/?$ /wp-trackback.php?year=$1&monthnum=$2&day=$3&name=
   > $4 [QSA] RewriteRule ^feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ /wp-feed.php?feed=$1 [QSA] RewriteRule
   > ^comments/feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ /wp-feed.php?feed=$1&withcomments=1 [QSA]
 * Save the file as text-only and upload it as an ASCII format.
 *  [moneydynamics](https://wordpress.org/support/users/moneydynamics/)
 * (@moneydynamics)
 * [21 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-help-with-permalinks/#post-112626)
 * that didn’t work for me either.
    So far the only thing that has “kinda” worked
   was using the custom prefix /index.php/archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/
   To use this you have to edit the index.php with the RSS URL Also, the “RSS feed
   for comments on this post” link doesn’t work.
 *  Thread Starter Anonymous
 * [21 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-help-with-permalinks/#post-113027)
 * I’m new to this as well but maybe I can help since I had the same kind of problem–
   I fought with this issue for hours and got a lot of help from some great people
   here in the forum
    The server that I use has Apache 1.3.27 and PHP 4.3.2 – and
   I’m using WordPress 1.3 alpha-5 Everything is working for me now – I’m using 
   the same setting “/archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/”- but this is
   what “my” problem was: I made an htaccess.txt file in notepad – uploaded it to
   the server – and thought I renamed the file properly, but I did not – when I 
   renamed the file, I removed the .txt part but forgot to add the dot in front –
   the file name went from htaccess.txt to htaccess instead of .htaccess Double 
   check and make sure you did not do the same thing – when looking at code for 
   hours, it’s a very easy mistake to make as I found out. My second suggestion 
   is to change the chmod setting for the .htaccess file to 766 – someone had suggested
   a setting of 666 but that didn’t work – when I changed it to 766 everything worked
   ok – not being well versed in this stuff, I’m not sure if this change from 666
   to 766 causes any problems elsewhere but at least it fixed this problem. Once
   I corrected these two issues – I no longer had to worry about copying and pasting
   all the generated code into the .htaccess file because wordpress did that automatically
   for me It seems that when you press the “update permalink structure” button in
   the wordpress admin panel, wordpress will only generate the code that is needed
   for the .htaccess file, if it cannot write to the .htaccess file itself – If 
   you push the button and no code appears at the bottom of the page, then everything
   should be ok You can check to see that .htaccess has been written to by going
   to Manage/Files in the admin panel and selecting “.htaccess (for rewrite rules)
   in the right had column. Hope this helps correct your problem.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

The topic ‘PLEASE Help With Permalinks!!’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 6 replies
 * 4 participants
 * Last reply from: Anonymous
 * Last activity: [21 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/please-help-with-permalinks/#post-113027)
 * Status: not resolved

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