WordPress permalinks show up as 404 errors! How do you fix it?

One of the most common problems people contact me with regarding their WordPress blogs is the permalinks turning all their pages into 404 page not found errors. By default WordPress will link your blog entries as /?p=## but most people would rather the URL contain the post title, date or both. You go into the admin page, then settings and finally permalinks.

Once you change it, all your pages appear broken. Answer: Well first of all, don’t freak out, your pages are still there! The problem is most likely that WordPress was unable to write to your .htaccess file. You need to make sure that this is writable. In some FTP programs this file will be hidden.

There is often a setting that will let you view hidden files.

If not, just start a blank text file, call it TEMP.htaccess and upload it to your server. Change it’s permissions to make it writable, and then rename it to .htaccess. Now log back into your wordpress admin area and get back to the permalinks section.

This part is important!! Don’t just re-save your current settings. Since you didn’t actually make changes, it won’t re-save.

Change it back to the default, save it, and then change it to the permalinks that you want and save again.

That should do the trick. If it still dosen’t work then your .htaccess is still not writable and you should contact your hosting company.

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