Using mod_rewrite and permalinks on WordPress
I’ve always wondered how people made their links something like http://mydomain.com/this/is/my/page/and-this-is-the-title URL format. Well it’s the permalink option on WordPress. You will need mod_rewrite module for Apache as well. I don’t think it’s a module that preinstalled in Apache. So I got a hold of tech support for my host provider. They told me that mod_rewrite module is already installed. What I was missing was the .htaccess file in WordPress. So I just SSH into my website and created one. It may not save the file if it’s empty (which happened to me), so what I did was typed “#” in the very first line and I was able to save it. Then CHMOD the file with 666. Next I went to my WordPress options and selected the format, and bam! all done. If you have your own server, it should be easy to install since you are the admin, but like me, I pay for a web server, I have to contact tech support to get things installed, sometimes I can’t since it’s on a shared environment. Below are some links to get you started.
Info about permalinks in WordPress (this page also has a tutorial if you are using IIS instead of Apache) Info about Apache and mod_rewrite module
Well, no more mystery for me