Before I tell you How to Set Pretty Permalinks for your Blog. I’d like to explain.
What are Permalinks ?
Well, Permalinks are Permanent Links of your Blog Posts, Pages, etc. They are often called Page Slugs. Like the one you site right now at the address bar, looks like
http://www.chidimar.com/setting-up-pretty-permalinks/
This is the Permalink of the Article you are currently reading. The front part “http://www.chidimar.com/” is the domain name, the rest is the Slug or Permalink.
Permalinks are more explained at What are Permalinks ?
Heading back to point,
How to set Pretty Permalinks for your Blog?
Well, Its as simple as.
- Login to your WordPress Admin Panel.
- Go to http://www.yoursitename.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php
- Follow as the Picture below:
- Make sure your .htaccess is writeable, Click “Save Changes”
WordPress itself has described permalinks very neatly on: Using Permalinks, with different useable structure tags.
We are using the “%postname%” structure tag, this shows directly the Post name after the domain name, as:
http://www.chidimar.com/setting-up-pretty-permalinks/
The Pretty and the Ugly thing !?
Well, Permalinks which are easily readable by the Search Engine crawler as well as Reader are considered as Pretty Permalinks. Yea obviously you cannot understand what’s behind the post domainname.com/?p=23 
So most of them are considered ugly. Users use %author% or %category% to show permalinks with more detail.
I guess, its enough for one to understand about Permalinks. And if I’m missing something, don’t forget to comment and share with us !
March 28th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Another nice post
I had a huge problem when I started blogging… I couldn’t set up the permalinks. As a result I lost a lot of traffic – as soon as I set them as /category/post-name/ I noticed an increase in traffic and also Search Engine traffic.
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April 1st, 2009 at 7:38 pm
this is so useful for me thank you so much
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April 3rd, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Permalinks are very important for SEO and for users. Great post
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April 4th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Thankyou everyone for Comments.
Yes, they are kinda must for Search Engine Juice
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April 17th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Permalinks are a headache and now a days its the 1st thing i change when i start a blog.
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April 17th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Same here, the nice first step !
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June 8th, 2009 at 11:31 pm
I strongly recommend that you turn the No Follow off in your comment section. I’ll watch Google Webmaster Tools, and if the links don’t show up after a couple of weeks — I won’t go back to that blog again. Another suggestion: you should have a Top Commentator widget installed. Do Follow and Top Commentator will ensure that you have a successful blog with lots of readers!
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November 30th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Straight forward information and tips, thanks a lot
.-= PSP Go´s last blog ..Buy Sony PSP Go – Quick Buying Q&A =-.
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February 28th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
Any suggestion on the best form of permalinks? Some suggest this and some like that. Little bit confused. And when should we change the permalinks? Is it after the site being indexed or before it? Thanks!
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