This change must be done immediately <\/strong>after your website goes online to make sure your site is indexed by search engines using the correct URL, the following animation shows you how to configure permalinks on WordPress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the above steps don’t make any effect in your URLs, and you get instead the following message, that means you’ll have to configure your Apache web server<\/a> before being able to modify the WordPress permalinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The below image is just a zoom of the image above acting as an spotlight over the WordPress directives<\/strong> that have to be included in the “.htaccess<\/strong>” file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This particular topic was covered in the following article, feel free to go over it if you want to learn how to enable Apache mod_rewrite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Be sure your Virtual Host file<\/a> is configured as shown in the following image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve highlighted the two lines that will enable new rules included in the “.htaccess” files to be applied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you’ve probably noticed, WordPress has already prepared the directives for us, they start with the tag “BEGIN WordPress<\/strong>“, and after a few comments (the lines which start with the pound symbol #) you’ll find the rules inside the IF module, immediately after the closing tag of the IF module you can see the “END WordPress<\/strong>” comment, see image below.<\/p>\n\n\n This file is located in the root folder of your website, if the ownership and permissions<\/a><\/strong> are configured properly, then WordPress shouldn’t have any problem to write the “.htaccess<\/strong>” file automatically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you followed the best practices about Ownership and Permissions for the .htaccess file, your file must look like in the following screenshots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the CLI you can use the list command as follow:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using the GUI provided by WinSCP you must see the following.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lamp.ciscoar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/wordpress-permalinks-apache-centos7.gif\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nPermalinks common error<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lamp.ciscoar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/wordpress-permalinks-common-error_v2-1024x413.jpg\")
<\/a>WordPress Directives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lamp.ciscoar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/wordpress-permalinks-common-error_v2_zoom.jpg\")
<\/a>Step 1 – Enable mod_rewrite<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Step 2 – Enable .htaccess<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lamp.ciscoar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/wordpress-permalinks-common-error-enable-htaccess.jpg\")
<\/a>Step 3 – Copy and Paste the WordPress directives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n# BEGIN WordPress\n# The directives (lines) between `BEGIN WordPress` and `END WordPress` are\n# dynamically generated, and should only be modified via WordPress filters.\n# Any changes to the directives between these markers will be overwritten.\n<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>\nRewriteEngine On\nRewriteBase \/\nRewriteRule ^index\\.php$ - [L]\nRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f\nRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d\nRewriteRule . \/index.php [L]\n<\/IfModule>\n# END WordPress\n<\/pre><\/div>\n\n\nStep 4 – .htaccess file location<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lamp.ciscoar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/htaccess-path-graphical-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\/var\/www\/example.com\/public_html\/.htaccess<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\nStep 5 – .htaccess ownership and permissions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
ls -la .htaccess<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lamp.ciscoar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/htaccess-path-cli.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lamp.ciscoar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/htaccess-octal0600permissions-apache-owner.png\")
<\/a>Problem solved<\/h2>\n\n\n\n