Advice Network Founders Blog

Sorry for the super long title, but this is the first blog post in a new era. Until 10 minutes ago, a typical blog post URL here on the Advice Network Founders Blog would have looked like this: http://www.advicenetwork.com/blog/?p=3 now, the same post looks like this: http://www.advicenetwork.com/blog/2007/08/07/what-the-heck-is-advice-network-anyway/

Many of you already know that having the post title in the URL is better for search engine optimization. Only, I could not figure how to do it! I even found the place in the WordPress control panel that changed the preferences, but when I selected the new option, WordPress told me to edit my .hcacess file (whatever that is, I’ve now edited it, and I still don’t know!), and my blog was broken. I quickly changed it back, and vowed never to touch it again.

Little did I know, help was on the way! I was on successcreeations.com and I mentioned in the comments the trouble I was having.

Well, low and behold, Chris emailed me! Nice to find a successful blogger who takes the time to communicate with his readers.  I’ll put the email conversation here, in case you are having similar troubles.

Chris:

Alex,

Been seeing your comments over at SuccessCREEations and I appreciate your joining in and adding to the conversation.

I’m curious which WordPress plugin you were having the .htaccess problems with. Often the problem is either because of the permission settings on the .htaccess file or because the plugin itself isn’t compatible with the version of WordPress running.

In the first case the plugin usually just doesn’t work. The second case can cause the whole thing to come crashing down with an error message.

If I can help at all, give me a shout.

Enjoy!

–Chris

Me: 

Chris,

Thanks for dropping the line. I guess technically it was not a plug in, it was changing the settings so the URL’s would have the post title in them instead of numbers.

I changed the settings, and WP said to change .hcacess. I even fired up text editor, filled in the fields WP said to fill in, saved it as .hcacess, and then figured out how to find the now invisible file. I then ftp’d the file to my server, and my blog completely crashed.

I was then able to remove the poison pill, change the settings back to default, and I never had the guts to touch it again.

What did I do wrong?

Alex

Chris: 

Ah, changing the permalinks. Yep. I’ve buggered that up too.

There is an easier way.

You can create a blank text file, name it .htaccess and FTP it to the root file of your server just like you did, except leaving out all the code in the text file. (I usually name the file htaccess.txt then after I’ve FTP’d it go in and change the name with the file manager on my server to .htaccess so that Windows or Mac OSX doesn’t hide it on me. But both ways work.)

Then go into your server account and set the permission for the .htaccess file so that WordPress can change it for you. Set the permission to 766 or 777.

Next go to your WordPress dashboard under Options–>Permalinks and set them how you want them to show.

WordPress will make the proper changes to the .htaccess file for you automatically. Test your links to make sure they show the way you want them to.

IMPORTANT: Once you get your permalinks showing the way you want them go back and reset the permission on your .htaccess file back down to 644. If you don’t you are leaving your site vulnerable to hackers and malicious code.

Also note: When you change the permalink structure any links that are inbound to specific pages will be broken. To keep them working while making the change is much more involved than I could cover in an email. But changing them to a more SEO friendly format can be well worth the cost of a few broken links.

Hope that helps. I’m looking forward to seeing what you do with your Advice Network site. I think you’ve got a good idea there.

Enjoy!

–Chris

Me:

Chris,

Thanks for taking the time to help.

One follow up question, how do I do this “Then go into your server account and set the permission for the .htaccess file so that WordPress can change it for you. Set the permission to 766 or 777.”

Thanks again,
Alex

Chris:

Depends on how your web host sets up your account access.

In my case we’ve got cPanel and I go into “File Manager”, select the file name and click on “Change Permissions”, change it to the settings I want and then click “Save”.

But your web host may be different. Without looking at it I couldn’t tell you for sure. You should be able to ask them if you can’t figure it out though.

–Chris

 And that is about it. A few notes on the implementation.

 1. It was “File Manager” in the cpanel. Once I was there, I clicked the .hcacess, and a little box came up where I could:

Show File
Delete File
Edit File
Change Permissions
Rename File
Copy File
Move File

So, first I changed permissions,  then I made the changes in WordPress, then word press told me to make changes in the .hcacess (if you scroll down enough, it tells you what those changes are) so I went pack to “File Manager” hit the “edit File” link, and made the changes right there. That did the trick, and yes, I changed the permissions back again.

2. Worried about the loss of all incoming links (all 20 of them, but still) I was prepared to  make 88 301 pages to redirect everything. Somehow, I found that I didn’t have too. WordPress seems to have done that for me. For example, if you go here: http://www.thelinkbait.com/win-a-macbook-computer/ you may see the link to my blog where it says “If you want to learn more about Advice Network, go here” Well, that link still works. Now, that is not a fair example, as I did make a redirect for that page, but I checked out boink blogs (who do not get a link as they are a scrapper) Boink has been scrapping my content for a few months, and the links still work from there too.

 I can’t say why. If you can, or if you see a flaw in my logic, please let me know in comments.