August 25, 2004

How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks

WordPress’s default behavior for permalinks is to create a URL that looks something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?p=2

where p is the post id.

If you care at all about the search engines indexing your blog, and you should if you want anyone to read it :) , you’ll want to use a little SEO (search engine optimization) trick by having nice, neat URLs that describe your post.

In my case, I wanted my individual post archives to be in the root of my domain, as search engines like Google devalue a page the deeper it is into the site. I also wanted the link title be the post’s name, so that my permalinks will look like this: http://www.yoursite.com/this-is-my-posts-title.htm

To do it:

You will need to have an .htaccess file and make it editable by WP. Sounds hard, but WordPress makes it easy. First of all, if you don’t know what it is, an .htaccess file is simply a text file that can contain instructions for the webserver. If you have an .htaccess file already, great. If you don’t have an .htaccess file, you’ll need to create a text file using any text editor (notepad will do) that simply has a blank page and upload it to your server. You will then need to change the properties of the .htaccess file on the server, most easily done with the same FTP program you probably used to upload wordpress to your server as well as your themes, the .htaccess files, etc. What you’re wanting to do is make the file writable. This can be accomplished by doing a chmod on the .htaccess file (many FTP programs offer this when you right click on the file -they give you an option of chmod or sometimes it is referred to as properties. So chmod the .htaccess file to 666 to make the file writable so that WordPress can edit it by itself to update the permalink structure. (If you don’t want to make the .htaccess writable by the server, then when you’re done setting up the Permalink structure WordPress will tell you what code to insert into your .htaccess file yourself using a text editor)

- log into WordPress, and then click on ‘Options’. Next click the sub-category under options entitled ‘Permalink’

- the page you’re on will now describe all the fields you can use to create your permalink. I only cared about the post name so in the edit box just underneath where it says, ‘Use the template tags above to create a virtual site structure:’ I typed the following:

/%postname%.htm

NOTE: for faster performance, it is better to include a unique variable such as the post ID number within the permalink structure If you choose to go this route, you could setup your permalinks as follows:

/%postname%-%post_id%.htm

or

/%post_id%/%postname%/

or

/%post_id%/%postname%.htm

- at this point you should click the button to Update Permalink Structure.

So now, my first WordPress post on my Tool Reviews Site can be found at http://www.toolreviews.biz/porter-cable-cffn250n-finish-brad-nailer-combo-kit.htm (btw - that post is more of a placeholder while evaluating WordPress than anything else..)

Personal Opinion Warning: Some sites have recommended including the category as part of the permalink, but this will slow down wordpress performance because many of your posts are likely to have more than one category so it can get confusing as to figure out which category WP will choose for your permalink.

The best time to set up ‘Pretty Permalinks’ is the moment you install your blog because if you already have a bunch of existing posts, changing the permalink structure will make it so that your old links to those posts will result in page not found errors - to fix this you would need to edit the .htaccess file to set up permanent redirects for each post and page in the form of:

Redirect 301 http://www.yoursite.com/index.php?p=2 http://www.yoursite.com/the-new-post-title.htm

This way people who have linked to your old URLs will get automatically redirected to the current page URL.

This all sounds WAY more complicated than it actually is when you follow the instructions step by step so don’t be overwhelmed - you can do it!

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    Comments

    August 26, 2004

    Pam G. said:

    Thank you soooo much for this page! I’ve spent the past two or so weeks really studying blogware options, as I want to move away from blogger.com. While I’m quite comfortable with handcoding HTML & CSS, validating, and even customizing a few perl scripts, the blog world is new to me, in the hands-on sense. WP seemed to be a great choice, but I despised the no-information-given URLs it creates. Your page perfectly responds to that concern.

    Now, if I can just get up the heart to delve into the unknown (to me) world of php and mySQL. Fortunately, my (new) host, Pair Networks, has the required software in place. I’ll do some more reading about the basics, so come Labor Day weekend, I can take a huge cup of coffee, and dig in. By then, I *should* have made the final choice between b2evolution and wordpress.

    I owe ya one! Thanks again.

    pam

    October 10, 2004

    blau said:

    Thank you, I tried it on an WP blog I maintain and it works. Just did as you write and put the .htaccess in the document root, which in my case is not the wordpress directory.

    If you care you can find it here: www.reister.org. Its my family design and sculpture activity.

    November 12, 2004

    Mark said:

    One item to note, if you have links to individual posts either in your blog or from other sites, editting the .htaccess may cause those links to be broken if you have editted the permalinks in the past. I would recommended that you add in the additional lines rather than a replacing the file completely. That seemed to work better on my site it in my site.
    Mark

    January 10, 2005

    Joe said:

    /%postname%.htm

    I added the above code in my permalink setting and entered the generated code to an htaccess file.

    i added some new posts to the blog since completing the steps above.

    the problem is i seem to have blown up my wp blog. what ever link in the post i click — post title, comment, — the page isn’t found. i can’t add comments to posts anymore.

    it’s a new blog — my first one.
    ne1 know what i must do to fix this problem?

    January 19, 2005

    Karen said:

    I wanted to impliment this because I feel it would be much better. It worked fine until I clicked on my categories. I found that my template was thrown into chaos and since I’m a newbie at all this, I didn’t know how to fix the problem and had to revert back to the default.

    Do you have any idea what went wrong, and how I can fix it?

    January 22, 2005

    ppaul said:

    Thanks for this way. But when I click any of my post, getting the following error:

    Not Found
    The requested URL /wp/toyota-expert-says-high-volume-hydrogen-powered-fuel-cell-cars-at-least-25-years-away.htm was not found on this server.

    Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    January 31, 2005

    AD said:

    I tried this, it works - except for when it is listing all the months - wordpress no longer shows the link (www.example-site.com/archives/10/03) - instead it just shows (www.example-site.com/archives).

    How do I fix this?

    February 7, 2005

    Henrik Rasmussen said:

    Thank you!

    When I click one of the months under Archives I get page not found and this is the url:

    http://twowayradiodirectory.com/blog/%postname

    The messages do have the correct url with the postname in them.

    Anyone know a fix?

    Thanks

    I fixed it by using

    /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

    instead of just

    /%postname%.htm

    February 9, 2005

    cece said:

    Not sure what the .htaccess is for (color me duh I’m blushing) but i ended up deleting it to get this to work. The links work fine but when I click on the permalink, it breaks all the graphics (which may explain what the .htaccess is for LOL……..

    February 10, 2005

    wolfy said:

    what about other linking fucnctions… my wordpress was linking with index.html?m=22341235 etc, now they are all gone :P

    Help please

    March 5, 2005

    brook said:

    Blogger.Com Blogger is my very first blogtool I knew. At first, I only know a bit about weblog. I only made a personal site. Using iframe, and got hosted at free hosting service. And when I wanted to “make a page where I can post something regularly, I posted it manually. Yes, manually :) Googling, and surfing on the net… and I found Blogger. Then I surfed to site, and found Donnie’s site. My question (at that time “How to make such site?”). -_- I got my first Blogger site hosted at Blog*Spot. No commenting system, no referer. Nothing, just a simple weblog.

    May 15, 2005

    Lee said:

    ive followed your blog about the permalinks but now the “pages” ive made dont display in the side bar. how can i fix this?

    www.clearwatermed.net

    Lee said:

    sorry the url is www.clearwatermedia.net i think it might be because the pages are now in folders?

    August 6, 2005

    Abi Studios said (trackback):

    Search Engine Optimisation

    Ok this is the start of a journey to get my WP sites search engine friendly!
    Number One:
    How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks
    WordPress&’s default behavior for permalinks is to create a URL that looks s…

    August 19, 2005

    Nick said:

    AWESOME thanks for explaining it so easily, had such a hardtime w/ WordPress’ explaination.

    September 26, 2005

    Mustafa said:

    Very nice. Thanks for explaining it, Wordpress is a very interesting blog software.

    October 2, 2005

    Mike said:

    Thanks so much for the great tip! My blog is about SEO and I’m a newbie at blogging so your information was the best of both worlds for me. I read the other posts on this thread and found a reference that might help some folks out:

    http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#Fixing_.28.htaccess.29_Generation_Issues

    I hope this helps. Thanks again for the great tip!

    October 4, 2005

    nando said:

    Hi,

    Even I had seen many answers, I couldn’t find the way to my server to work with friendly URLs.

    This is the error I am getting everytime.

    500 Internal Server Error

    The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

    Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@kakoky.net and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

    More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

    Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
    Apache/2.0.48 Server at www.XXXXXX.net Port 80

    November 24, 2005

    for said:

    word path now lets see how good bloggin is

    December 9, 2005

    Billy said:

    Where is the .htaccess file supposed to go when I’m using WorPress thru a DreamHost hostplan? TIA.

    December 14, 2005

    Gerald Njuguna said:

    Hi,
    I’ve installed wordpress and used this structure
    /archives/%postname%/

    and wrote a test post titled - testing Wordpress

    The permalink generated is
    http://www.mysite.com/blog/archives/testing-wordpress/

    but when you click on it an error is generated saying

    “The requested URL /blog/archives/testing-wordpress/ was not found on this server.”

    What could be the problem. Please advise

    Gerald

    January 30, 2006

    Kurt said:

    Thanks for the guide.

    I’m using the custom setting and everything seems to work fine including the category option. The only problem seems to be the Title on top. It looks like this:

    Site name >> Blog Archives >> Custom Title

    Even though I post new articles/news/blogs the word ‘Blog Archives’ continue to appear on Title of the page. Can this be done away with? I want it to look like this:

    Site name >> Custom Title

    Thank you in advance!

    January 31, 2006

    Emily from How to Blog said:

    @Kurt - what displays on the title of your page is wholly controlled by what theme you are using for your WordPress blog. You can either change to a different theme that displays the title the way you want, or modify your current theme to customize the title on the category page. Page titles are not affected by permalinks. Hope that helps!

    February 3, 2006

    AnotherWin95 said:

    Thanks for this post - helped me fix a problem with my htaccess file and now permalinks are working!

    February 16, 2006

    Neil Merton said:

    Worked like a charm - thanks for helping out!

    February 23, 2006

    dailyModern said:

    Terrifying! But worked great. We love your site, thanks for all the help - you rock!

    February 24, 2006

    Rob Miller said:

    Thanks for the great tutorial. I really appreciate it.

    March 2, 2006

    chris said:

    very nice smile.

    […] WordPress does support a lot of options for formatting your permalinks. None of the out of box options served my purpose. On my Yahoo account, I found a plugin called Customizable Permalinks already activated. I could access the options from Options -> Permalinks menu. The date and name based, came very close to what I wanted, but still not very user friendly as it has a lot of sub folders. Again it was Emily Robbins to my rescue with her article on configuring wordpress to create search engine friendly links. It was exactly what I wanted. The custom format of /%postname%.htm worked very well. But then it instructed that I have to edit my .htaccess file and add a bit of code to make sure everything works properly. Here I came across a snag with Yahoo. Their file manager did not show the .htaccess file, now did it let me create or upload one as the filename begain with a “.”. So I was stuck. Having paid for the yahoo account just yesterday understanding that it was the best option for advanced wordpress configurations, I was a bit taken aback with this limitations. Have mailed Yahoo support regarding it, but unfortunately as the mail id they provide is yahoo based, it is blocked from the network here. Will have to check from home to see what they say. […]

    Amar Galla said:

    Updated the links to your article. All the best for your new blog home.

    Sadly I did not manage to get across the .htaccess limitation on yahoo. It is just plain silly and annoying. Do not have enough time to cancel my account with yahoo and shift to some other provider, and hence, will have to make do with this as of now, and home yahoo allows .htaccess files or wordpress comes up with an alternate way of managing permalinks.

    Herman said:

    Emily - you mentioned using /%postname%.htm
    Does this apply for WP 2 also

    I ask because I had the option to check:

    /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

    Do I still place your rewrite code in the .htacess file for it to work (it was not created with the installation)?

    Do I include the[QSA] at the bottom of your code?

    Thanks

    March 23, 2006

    Jake Rutter said:

    Fantastic tutorial!

    Jake Rutter said:

    Fantastic Tutorial!!!!

    Osman Gormus said:

    … I installed WP on a Windows2003 Server. So IIS wouldn’t understand a .htacces file. Only result I get is 404 :(
    Has anyone found a workaround for windows platform?

    April 10, 2006

    rosie said:

    hiya,
    worked like a charm on my website Dublin Events Blogs. Thanks !!

    May 3, 2006

    czzec said:

    Nice one

    May 7, 2006

    Andre said:

    There is other problem that my-url is not as good at my_url. The later gets better SERPs.

    May 16, 2006

    ChineseGuy said:

    Ihave tried this method, but .htaccessfileis creating problemfromtimeto time. It suddenly stops functioning and if someone clicks the link it says “the page not found” then I upload the .htaccess file again and the problem will be solved but after some time it again gives the same error. I do not know why.

    May 24, 2006

    Webmaster said:

    Perhaps you are not changing the permissions of .htaccess file after you are done with updating it.

    While you update this file, the permissions should be 666, after finished editing, set it to 664.

    June 1, 2006

    Toby Skaats said:

    Thank You soooo much, I have been trying for weeks to get this figured out. You are a GODSEND! Smart and Good Looking. Just read your about me page. Same health experiences, I feel your pain. Keep smilin’!

    June 5, 2006

    SIG Master Blog said (pingback):

    […] This is a good reference on how to get your blog noticed by Search Engines. Thanks to Emily Robbins. http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/how-to-configure-wordpress-to-create-search-engine-friendly-urls-for-permalinks-242.htm […]

    June 20, 2006

    Dennis Bjørn Petersen said:

    Excellent guide. Thanks alot :-)

    June 21, 2006

    supriyadisw said:

    Thx for a great tutorial. Have a great day

    […] Yeah, so, anyway, was running the fully-customised link structure without realising one crucial thing - it was a terrible move from an SEO point of view, and in hindsight may explain why my links listings in Technorati always contained a load of my own posts as well as other sites linking in. Bah. Well, there’s the amateur learning curve for you. I’ve always maintained that humans only ever learn things the hard way; I believe this has demonstrated the truth of this statement, at least when applied to myself. […]

    June 28, 2006

    SEO-Reloaded said:

    I’m using WP on my SEO Blog and this tutorial has been really helpful! Thanks a lot

    July 2, 2006

    Amd Duron 16 Ghz said:

    Very good site. Thank you.

    Very good site. Thank you:-)

    Very good site. Thank you:-)

    Good site. Thank you:-)

    July 3, 2006

    Bill Amberg said:

    Good site. Thanks!

    […] For more information about why you should use custom permalinks look here or here. […]

    August 2, 2006

    Counter said:

    Thank you so much. I’ve just used this inf0 to get permalinks working on my latest site.

    Great stuff!!

    August 10, 2006

    Prashant said:

    your post is great and i have done the changes but i am facing one problem.. my trackback links show

    http://www.styleikon.com/an-impressionable-age.htm/trackback

    instead of http://www.styleikon.com/an-impressionable-age.htm

    why does it add “trackback” at the end of the link??

    August 14, 2006

    Tobin Hunt said:

    Wow, thank you so much, finally an explanation in layman’s terms (or layperson if you prefer!). My permalinks are SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY - YIPPEE!!

    Had some tricky moments where I accidentally made my whole blog password protected with an htaccess mistake, but I’m still learning.

    August 23, 2006

    Steve Green said:

    Hey this is a great post even for newbies.
    I’m just considering moving from Blogger to Wordpress on my Hosting server.
    As a new blogger. I’m presuming that it’s better to get all this stuff setup before posting for the very first time, to aviod the pitfalls?

    Does anyone kknow if it’s possible to “export” my whole blog from Blogger to Wordpress?

    Thanks
    Steve

    August 29, 2006

    John Pools said:

    I’ve added permalinks to my wordpress blog, and they seem to be working fine. One thing that bothers me is that when you click into a post the url still shows an ID number. Note the (7) in the following URL: http://www.swimming-pool-store.com/supplies/7/swimming-pool-supplies/

    I realise that this seven corresponds to the order in which the post was made. Is it possible to remove these numbers? Or have I made a mistake when I installed permalinks?

    Thanks

    John

    August 30, 2006

    Dan said:

    Thanks, works great for me on one of the sites I’m playing around with. Really simple solution to set up.

    September 8, 2006

    Ahamed said:

    Thanks for the guide.

    I need help on :

    1) The title of the page to contain the post subject. How to modify the theme?

    2) Archive Month links are showing only http://mywebdomain.com/%postname

    Thank you

    September 21, 2006

    Kamran said:

    Here is the fix for page not found problem , “The requested URL /blog/archives/testing-wordpress/ was not found on this server.” More info can be found at http://www.kamranzaidi.com

    You have to unable the mod_rewrite in your apache http.conf file. Step 1: Go to your apache conf directory , $APACHE/apache/conf
    Step 2: Edit httpd.conf file.
    Step 3: Search for “Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) Support” section
    Step 4: Unable loading of rewrite mod by removing # sign from this line LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so
    Step 5: Search for “AddModule mod_rewrite.c” and unable it by removing # sign.
    Step 6: save and restart your apache server.
    Step 7: Try again , now you should be able to view pages

    Hopefully it ll work.

    Thanks

    September 25, 2006

    Douglas Seib said:

    Only thing not working now is archives -
    I get 404.

    The requested URL /2006/09/ was not found on this server.

    Categories and pages both - pages give the /title/

    the URL for this custom wordpress blog is at client’s http://www.electronicsleader.net

    September 30, 2006

    Patricia Govezensky said:

    Thanks, I was looking for this!

    October 7, 2006

    Webbdesign said:

    Great tutorial!

    October 8, 2006

    aukc said:

    Thanks for informaton, this is the first time to I see the content of the .htaccess file. I never bothered about it before I read your post.

    I don’t know anything about .htaccess files but managed to set the permalinks using WP control panel. Is it neccessary or advisable to mess around with the .htaccess file?

    October 12, 2006

    Syed Networks said:

    I have an important question, maybe this post is quite old but i want fancy URL like domain.com/something-myblog. but currently it appears something like /?=234 but i don’t want like this. So what i did is i copied the above lines to my .htaccess file, but question is here i’m using new WP version and i don’t have above option in admin .. permalinks. Please advice what should i do to avail that feature? Thanks

    October 14, 2006

    Aftonbladhet said:

    Syed Networks: Try this

    # BEGIN WordPress

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

    # END WordPress

    October 19, 2006

    Kiviniar said:

    Hugs and kisses……

    Its working…thanks a ton

    Regards
    Kiviniar

    p.s.i can sleep a relieved man

    October 24, 2006

    Link Problem Solved at Jack of All Trades said (pingback):

    […] I figured out the link problem, after the update I made a few changes according to this tutorial Word Press for Newbies by Elliot Back. Anyhow I used the code he talks about to activate pretty links, and for some reason all my links now gave me a 404 error, so I followed the instructions on this page instead. […]

    October 27, 2006

    Svenska Dagbladhet said:

    Thanks, works great for me on my site.
    Great post.

    […] Anyway, I just had to put /%postname%.htm to make my urls to include the title of the post. It worked by just doing so. No edit required in .htaccess as it is mentioned in couple of resources on the web (Click Here). […]

    November 4, 2006

    Sabah Drabu said:

    I was using the default option of wordpress, till web savvy friend pointed out that I should make my blog SEO friendly. Found you through the wordpress codex.
    Thanks for the .htaccess file, I was could not cook that up!

    November 9, 2006

    Mark said:

    previously my permalink structure is something like /%category%/%postname%/
    and i want to change it to /%postname%/ only, how can i do that such that old post should be redirected to the new one.

    November 15, 2006

    MyCorollories » My Experiences with WordPress said (pingback):

    […] How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks […]

    […] Next came the Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URLs which are the URLs that excludes unfriendly items to search engine such as ‘%’, ‘?’, ‘=’, ‘%’. In WordPress, Default URLs are in the form of as http://www.domain.com/index.php?p=2 where p is the post id.  In order to make these URLs Search Engine Friendly, I took my favorite route, I did google and found the article: How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks […]

    November 18, 2006

    evilryan said:

    I’m just starting to tinker with this stuff, this post has been extremely helpful. THANKS!

    Bill Dexter said:

    Thanks for the info, Emily. One question: how did you manage to put the number of readers by Feed Burner into Wordpress?

    November 21, 2006

    Sabri Arslan said:

    hello. i’m used
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
    on my wordpress mu v1.0 it’s working but subdirectories images not shown and i used users have a symbolic subdirectory. but not working.

    i tried also
    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=$1 [QSA]
    RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-z-]+).htm([0-9]+)?/?$ /index.php?name=$1&page=$2 [QSA]
    RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-z-]+).htm/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$ /wp-feed.php?name=$1&feed=$2 [QSA]
    RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-z-]+).htm/trackback/?$ /wp-trackback.php?name=$1 [QSA]
    RewriteRule ^feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ /wp-feed.php?feed=$1 [QSA]
    RewriteRule ^comments/feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$ /wp-feed.php?feed=$1&withcomments=1 [QSA]

    but not working for my blog system.

    i don’t understand mu.
    thank you

    November 23, 2006

    Albert said:

    Very helpful. Thanks a lot. I’m new to wordpress so I need all the tips I can get. I’m now going to scour your site for answers to other questions I have.

    Albert
    http://laowaichinese.net

    PS: the leave a comment form is very confusing. I wasn’t sure what goes where…

    November 28, 2006

    Gavriel said:

    I’m using the E-commerce plugin from http://www.instinct.co.nz/e-commerce/16 and I’d like to change it to use permalinks.

    For example instead of:
    catalog?category=4
    the link would be
    catalog/caregory_slug

    I’ve already changed the code, so the links are shown this way, I added to every category a slug in the DB.

    The problem is that I don’t know what to change in the .htaccess or WP code in order to tell WP that all the URLs that match ^catalog/ should be treated as it was catalog?…

    This is what I tried:
    RewriteRule ^catalog/([^/]*)/?$ /catalog?category_slug=$1 [L]
    RewriteRule ^catalog/([^/]*)/([^/]*)/?$ /catalog?category_slug=$1&subcategory_slug=$2 [L]

    Even when I try the next rule for testing:
    RewriteRule ^catalog/([^/]*)/([^/]*)/?$ /index.php?p=4&category_slug=$1&subcategory_slug=$2 [L]

    I get the default error page: Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.

    I’d really appriciate any help / hint / example to see how can I hack WP to use permalinks in this case.

    Expressn said:

    Thanks

    November 30, 2006

    Manu said:

    Great Sruff!

    Thanks…….

    December 12, 2006

    Arif Mahmood said:

    It is wrong that the search engines dont crawl deeper pages. The crawling is totally depending on your linking structures. One of an example is about.com. Beside this there are many other references which proves that the search engine crawler can crawl deeply. It totally depends on your link structure. Suppose you give the links of your deeper pages at your home page then the crawler must crawl these pages following the links. The crawler follows the link not the pages hierarchy. At the end i must say in your permalink if you choose the structures or tags which have key words then it would be an advantage.

    December 15, 2006

    Scientific Library said:

    Zeus Web Sever Request Rewriting->Enabling Request Rewriting Enabled
    Rewrite Script

    Enter the rewrite script here:
    RULE_0_START:
    match URL into $ with /category/(.*)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$
    if not matched then goto RULE_0_END
    set URL = /wp-feed.php?category_name=$1&feed=$2
    goto END
    RULE_0_END:

    RULE_1_START:
    #match URL into $ with /category/([_a-z-]+\/)+$
    match URL into $ with /category/?(.*)
    if not matched then goto RULE_1_END
    set URL = /index.php?category_name=$1
    goto END
    RULE_1_END:

    RULE_2_START:
    match URL into $ with /author/(.*)/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$
    if not matched then goto RULE_2_END
    set URL = /wp-feed.php?author_name=$1&feed=$2
    goto END
    RULE_2_END:

    RULE_3_START:
    match URL into $ with author/?(.*)
    if not matched then goto RULE_3_END
    set URL = /index.php?author_name=$1
    goto END
    RULE_3_END:

    RULE_4_START:
    match URL into $ with ([_0-9a-z-]+).html([0-9]+)?/?$
    if not matched then goto RULE_4_END
    set URL = /index.php?name=$1&page=$2
    goto END
    RULE_4_END:

    RULE_5_START:
    match URL into $ with ([_0-9a-z-]+).html/(feed|rdf|rss|rss2|atom)/?$
    if not matched then goto RULE_5_END
    set URL = /wp-feed.php?name=$1&feed=$2
    goto END
    RULE_5_END:

    RULE_6_START:
    match URL into $ with ([_0-9a-z-]+).html/trackback/?$
    if not matched then goto RULE_6_END
    set URL = /wp-trackback.php?name=$1
    goto END
    RULE_6_END:

    RULE_7_START:
    match URL into $ with comments/feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$
    if not matched then goto RULE_7_END
    set URL = /wp-feed.php?feed=$1&withcomments=1
    goto END
    RULE_7_END:

    RULE_8_START:
    match URL into $ with feed/?([_0-9a-z-]+)?/?$
    if not matched then goto RULE_8_END
    set URL = /wp-feed.php?feed=$1
    goto END
    RULE_8_END:

    RULE_11_START:
    match URL into $ with ([0-9]+)\/([0-9]+)\/(([0-9]+)\/)?$
    if not matched then goto RULE_11_END
    set URL = /index.php?m=$1$2$3
    goto END
    RULE_11_END:

    January 14, 2007

    ramakrishna said:

    Iam using wordpress2. In this blog you mentioned “Use the template tags above to create a virtual site structure”. But I do not have this option. The options I have : Options>>permalinks andunder permalinis there are two catagories: (1) Common Options (2) Optional. Under (1) Common Options the edit options are:
    __________________________________
    Default
    http://www.yoursitename.com/?p=123
    __________________________________
    Date and name based
    http://www.yoursitename.com/index.php/2007/01/14/sample-post/
    __________________________________
    Numeric
    http://www.yoursitename.com/index.php/archives/123
    __________________________________
    Custom, specify below
    __________________________________
    Under Optional:
    Catagory Base
    __________________________________
    I could not see the sentence “Use the template tags above to create a virtual site structure” to edit with /%postname%.htm

    Can you please guide me?
    Thanks and regards.

    January 16, 2007

    Ben Grinnell said:

    Worked like a charm! Thanks so much Emily, working on my second post at http://www.337design.com/blog.

    Is it better for SEO reasons to put it at blog.337design.com? Thanks for your help, Ben

    […] How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks […]

    Maki said:

    Hi! .. I was just wondering, why did you insert .htm behind the postname?

    I’ve seen many people just use /%postname%/ alone.

    Is there any difference?

    January 30, 2007

    John Farsburg said:

    Nice Article, but this is now deprecated in favor of using the following and having wordpress take over.

    # BEGIN WordPress

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

    # END WordPress

    http://www.askapache.com/2006/htaccess/htaccesselite-ultimate-htaccess-article.html

    February 4, 2007

    Shahzad said:

    Thankyou very much for putting this up, I was actually looking for a permalinks solution, and it turned out this was the one thing I was after !
    thanks a bunch !

    peace
    -mE

    February 17, 2007

    Shoukath said:

    Hi,
    how to rewrite the mod wp for my blog without losing the previous feeds?

    my blog

    my blog on Home Based Business

    February 22, 2007

    Mengoptimalkan SEO di Wordpress » Aziz Raharjo said (pingback):

    […] 2. Setting permalinks: pakai  format /keyword1/%category%/%postname%.keyword2 Ganti “keyword1″ dan “keyword2″ (tanpa quote) dengan keyword yang ditembak Misalnya situs mas tentang “blue widget tools”, maka yang harus ditulis /blue-widget/%category%/%postname%.tools atau standarnya ini aja: /%category%/%postname%.html (copy paste tulisan disebelah apa adanya). Sebelum merubah permalinks, rubah CHMOD file .htaccess ke 777 sumber ada di sini, sini, sini, dan sini 3. Update isian di menu Option –> Write –> Update Service Standarnya berisi rpc.pingomatic.com, sebenarnya ini aja udah cukup sih.. karena pingomatic memforward pingnya ke puluhan pinglist, tapi kalau mau lebih mantap lagi ya tambahin daftarnya. Daftar ping search ndiri aja ya… Oh ya, semakin banyak pinglist yang kita isikan, semakin lambat (lelet) waktu yang digunakan pada saat kita posting dan klik “publish”. […]

    […] Use descriptive URL’s - Whenever possible, put the same information you used in your title element into your web page URL. Know what characters are good (hyphens will stay and are parsed by the crawlers). Know which ones are bad (period and space characters are given hexidecimal codes and though the search engines may still be able to parse it, it makes your URL look extremely cluttered and much longer. Just name your files something simple, yet descriptive. If you do use a blogging system like WordPress, utilize the Permalink feature. You don’t want to use the default URL, which will look something like http://www.timtrice.com/p=4. That tells the crawlers nothing. Using Permalinks, you can convert that URL to http://www.timtrice.com/simple-steps-to-good-search-engine-optimization/. Much nicer, huh? Emily Robbins has a good How To article on setting permalinks for WordPress. If you use another sytem, do a search for permalinks in that system’s forums. I promise you the question has been asked 1,000 times! […]

    April 7, 2007

    Bit Motif» Blog Archive » WordPress Permalinks said (pingback):

    […] I thought I was going to have to get all old-school and actually do something with .htaccess. Then I found this link. It has way more information than I need, and some of it is old, but it got me to where I needed to go. […]

    […] How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks […]

    October 4, 2007

    Permalinks: | Wordpress Find It said (pingback):

    […] I found this site off of the Wordpress page about permalinks: […]

    October 15, 2007

    Dwell Time » links for 2007-10-16 said (pingback):

    […] How to Blog : How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks The best time to set up ‘Pretty Permalinks’ is the moment you install your blog because if you already have a bunch of existing posts, changing the permalink structure will make it so that your old links to those posts will result in page not found er (tags: wordpress permalink .htaccess) […]

    December 2, 2007

    十之八九 » permalinks said (pingback):

    […] 《How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks》 […]

    December 6, 2007

    Amar Galla's Weblog said (trackback):

    Configuring WordPress - Templates, Plugins, Themes, Services - Part 2

    One of the first things I needed was to get my blog indexed properly with search engines. I generally

    […] I am trying this  How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks […]

    […] I am trying this <a href=”http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/how-to-configure-wordpress-to-create-search-engine-friendly-urls-for-permalinks-242.htm”>How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks</a> […]

    […] How to configure WordPress to create search engine friendly URLs for permalinks […]

    […] If you would like to create permalinks on your blog so that search engines can index your site, therefore you will receive more traffic. Then check out this great tutorial that I found: Configuring WordPress with Permalinks. […]

    […] Kemudian setelah langkah diatas selesai, selanjutnya masuk ke wordpress setting dengan mengetik http://nurfajri.net/wp-admin pada browser favorite anda lalu klik tab settings, kemudian klik premalinks, pada common settings klik custom structure kemudian masukkan kode berikut : /%postname%-%post_id%.htm lalu klik save change, untuk hasil yang lebih baik mungkin bisa diganti dengan permalinks seperti ini /%postname%-%post_id%.htm atau /%post_id%/%postname%/.  Jika setting kita sudah benar makan pada saat kita klik judul postingan yang sudah kita publish hasilnya akan muncul seperti contoh permalinks berikut ini : http://nurfajri.net/upload-theme-di-wordpress-13.htm.  Bagi anda yang ingin lebih detail lagi dalam penggunakan permalinks ini bisa anda baca disini, atau juga bisa anda dibaca  disini, ………. Selamat mencoba. […]

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