Market My Blog

The [tag].htaccess[/tag] file the [tag]Permalink[/tag] Plugin needs can cause some big issues if you are trying to make your blog posts SEO friendly.  Luckily, I found the solution and your htaccess rewriteable problems are solved!  However, I’ll never admit how long I searched Google for nearly every term related to the “.htaccess” file issue that I was having with the Permalink Plugin.  Although I never found a true step-by-step outline on how to solve this solution, I did find about 40 different pages that allowed me to piece everything together.

Although this post is not directly related to [tag]marketing your blog[/tag] or how to drive [tag]traffic[/tag] to your blog, it actually does play a big roll.  I’ll get into that in at another time, but first, let me help you end your frustration and help you solve your htaccess Permalink issue.

I use CuteFTP and the .htaccess file does not appear within my files.  Reason is because of that pain in the @ss “.” before htaccess.  So the first thing that you need to do is log into your server directly.

1. Log into your server

Once logged into your server, navigate to the folder that you installed [tag]WordPress[/tag] into.  If you installed it directly, so you get to your blog by going to your www. x y z .com site directly, go there.  If you installed it in a folder called “blog” or any other folder, go there.

2. Open up notepad

Once you have notepad opened, paste the code into the notepad that Permalink kindly gave you on the bottom of the page when you learned that your .htaccess page was not rewriteable.  Just in case, here’s the code you need:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
# END WordPress

Once you have pasted the above code into notepad, save the file as anything.  Really!  Save it as abc.txt or whatever.  Now close it.  Now locate the file, open it back up and go to “save as”.  Change the file name to “.htaccess” without the “”’s of course and select “all files”.  Now save.  You’ll notice that the file is now is different format than a text document.

3. Upload file to server

Now upload the file to your server in the root - where you installed WordPress. 

4. Change permissions

You will now need to change the permissions so that the file is rewritable and Permalink can access it.  Change the CHMOD to 666. 

6. Go back to your WordPress Account

Make sure you have the custom option selected and enter:  /%post_id%/%postname%/
(Or which ever format that you’d like.)

Now you can click on “Update Permalink Structure”.  It worked!  Now go back to your server and change the CHMOD back to 644.

Why anyone didn’t anyone write out all of these details in one location is beyond me.  But after a few hair-pulling moments, it finally all came together.

Now why is this important?  SEO, which is one of the many topics of this blog.  But we’ll be getting more into that soon…

I hope the above was helpful and has saved you some time.