Need help with blog permalinks

[John Bogiatzis]

Having a strange problem.

Up until recently I have been using the standard wordpress permalinks for my various blog posts but would like to start creating custom permalinks to improve aesthetics and SEO.

Only problem is that every time I create a custom permalink structure I get back ERROR 404.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Regards,

John.

[BarefootMaternity]

Hi John,
I am no techie but do use wordpress & custom links. The value in my custom structure is: /%category%/%postname%/

Does this help you any???

[createdevelop]

Only problem is that every time I create a custom permalink structure I get back ERROR 404.

What server are you on and do you have a htaccess file uploaded?

Mostly problems with permalinks can be caused by something going wrong with the htaccess file, so you might either need to create a fresh blank one or delete the one you have.

Alternatively some servers (Zeus, used by Netregistry, is THE biggest offender), need special mod_rewrite instructions to make custom permalinks work.

Any chance you could provide a link, or give more details?

[John Bogiatzis]

Originally Posted by createdevelop

What server are you on and do you have a htaccess file uploaded?

Mostly problems with permalinks can be caused by something going wrong with the htaccess file, so you might either need to create a fresh blank one or delete the one you have.

Alternatively some servers (Zeus, used by Netregistry, is THE biggest offender), need special mod_rewrite instructions to make custom permalinks work.

Any chance you could provide a link, or give more details?

Thanks for your response:

Here is the default permalink that wordpress uses: http://www.johnbogiatzis.com/?p=70

I'm not sure if about

I have tried changing that in the permalink settings to a custom url such as http://www.johnbogiatzis.com/facebook-marketing but keep getting an Error 404 when clicking on the link.

I'm not sure about a htaccess file, although I am aware that this usually is the problem when it comes to errors with custom permalinks.

With regards to server its all hosted with Dreamhost from a oneclick install so don't know much about the technical side of this.

[Pick Me Graphics]

Im assuming you've already done it this way or similar but for those who are reading and want to know how to change your permalinks here is a quick vid to show you how

http://pickme.net.au/marketing-onlin...ng-permalinks/

If you did it like the vid explains and your still having probs there is a redirection plugin you could try, let me know and I'll post a link to it.

[createdevelop]

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Per...eration_Issues

This is the best thing I can find to work through for your problem. It is, obviously, difficult to diagnose the problem without access to the server etc.

[John Bogiatzis]

Thank you everyone!!

All fixed now. It was my mistake after all.

The value I entering all along was incorrect. Using /%category%/%postname%/ fixed everything.

Thank you also to Sarah. Your initial suggestion was also the correct one!!

[BarefootMaternity]

Oh thats great news, I am happy I could help you out :-)
Using custom links on my blog has really improved my natural search results so I hope it does yours too!

[Melinda B]

When writing your post you also have the option to edit the permalink. I have my permalinks set up to be the name of the post, and then I edit the small words out, such as the, and, if, etc.