Problem with Wordpress permalinks and mod_rewriter

Question

Hi there, first off...thank you so much for your time.

I was referred to you guys and heard here's the best place to find a solution.

Ok...so here's the problem.

My old programmer set up the wordpress permalinks to be dynamic, but we all know that they are the worst to pull in traffic from search engines (specially google).

So I need an expert to set it to custom structure, which will show the words on the title on the URL or "URL friendly links" if you may.

I have some knowledge of computers/programming myself and so I tried to log in on our site's wordpress admin page, and change the permalinks to "custom structure": /%category%/%postname%/ Then also add the word : "categories" on the "category base" and "tag" on "tag base".

What happens however is that when we change that the url links are successfully changed, however...evertime you click on a category link, it takes you back to the main page of the site (instead of the category you chose). That also happens when you click on the pages menu on the site (at the bottom of the pages. ex: 1,2,3,4,5...) it doesn't take you to those pages instead, back to the main pages.

I think it's something that was done to the theme of the actual wodrpress, instead of the FTP, etc...

It might be something simple and fast, but I just can't seem to do it myself.

Edited to add:

By the way...forgot to mention. I already added this to my htaccess. file

RewriteEngine on
ErrorDocument 404 /404.shtml

# BEGIN WordPress

# END WordPress
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thehypebr.uol.virgula.com.br$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.thehypebr.uol.virgula.com.br$
RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/thehypebr\.com" [R=301,L]

then i deleted it all and only have:

# BEGIN WordPress

# END WordPress

Answer 1

By the way...forgot to mention. I already added this to my htaccess. file

RewriteEngine on ErrorDocument 404 /404.shtml

BEGIN WordPress

END WordPress

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^thehypebr.uol.virgula.com.br$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.thehypebr.uol.virgula.com.br$ RewriteRule ^/?$ "http\:\/\/thehypebr.com" [R=301,L]

then i deleted it all and only have:

BEGIN WordPress

END WordPress

Answer 2

Looks like the rewrite rules necessary for pretty urls were not added to your .htaccess files like they were supposed to (as you can see, the wordpress part is empty but it should not be).

Maybe the permissions on .htaccess were too tight. Try setting the permissions on your .htaccess file to be world-writable. Then switch back to dynamic urls, then back to custom structure. Theoretically, if permissions were the problem, wordpress will fill in the rules now. And then you can set the permissions on .htaccess back to normal.

Answer 3

When you log into the backend of Wordpress and go to your permalinks section try hitting the save button again. Once the page refreshes saying it saved it, scroll to the bottom of the page and there should be a paragraph telling you what the .htaccess file should have in it. ( It is usally a grey or yellow background paragraph ) Copy that and paste it into your .htaccess file instead of what you have now. This should help add the correct rules.

It usually looks like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>