How to make your title appear in your links
I’ve seen this question many times on forums, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a post on how to have your post title appear on your links.
First, what does this mean? If you look in the address bar, you’ll notice that the URL is this one:
“http://www.wordpress-how-to.com/2008/10/14/how-to-make-your-title-appear-in-your-links”. This is an old SEO trick, now implemented in many web applications and yes, wordpress has support for it, just that it isn’t enabled by default.
The files/directories specified by the link don’t exist on your server, this is basically a redirection made by the htaccess file on your server. Therefore, when you hit “/2008/10/14/how-to-make-your-title-appear-in-your-links”, it will query the database for the post with that title and it will take you to index.php?p=somepostid. That’s all it happens in the background.
Let’s get to the point now. It’s very easy to enable this feature on wordpress. To do that, just login to your admin area, hit “Settings” (it’s in the upper right corner for the newer versions), then, from the contextual menu, pick “Permalinks” (or simply, put this at the end of your blog URL to access the page directly: “yourdomain.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php”).
From there, you pick one of the options, which one you consider to be the best (I’m using the second: day and name) and then click on save.
Please note that your root folder (or blog folder if it’s not located in root) should be writable. If it’s not, wordpress won’t be able to write the htaccess file.
This is it. If you enounter any problems, just let me know via email or reply to this post and I’ll be happy to help you.
- Peter
Tagged with: how to • permalinks • wordpress
Filed under: General • Wordpress How To
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
well i have to come to right place I hope.
Been trying to change my address bar or domain link which has been from day 1 set to default. But when I did choose from one of the better options, the url did not load and a page 404 was seen.
Some say it is host server that does not link. what do you think? plugged and played but still not got anywhere yet.
thanks and regards
Hey there
You might have to check something out: when you go to your permalinks settings and choose an option(other than the default one), if you don’t have the right permissions on your server, it will show a new box at the bottom of the page.
Did you see that box ?
hi, i see the optional section: category and tag base.
is that what you are referring to?
Nop.
After you hit save, if you see another box below the ones you are referring to then you have wrong permissions.
yes
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
Ok.
If you don’t know how to set writing permissions for other users, here’s the solution:
Copy that and save it to a file named “.htaccess”. Then upload the file to your blog root folder (eg: near the index.php file).
It should work after that.
Hey all! This is my personal message to subscribers and readers of this site.
Peter is a genuine angel. He has personally solved my problem with the domain address on my site cus I am very nervous and no clue about how to go about renaming the address.
Look no further, you have come to right man and place about wordpress how-to site. It’s home for wordpress users.
Sincerely
Annie