Eric Blackwell wrote here of using Custom Permalinks in WordPress by going to the WordPress Dashboard Settings page
Clicking the Permalinks tab, then checking Custom Structure
And typing this short piece of code:
/%postname%/
Then click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
Now click View Site, click on one of your post titles .... and if your blog is hosted on GoDaddy, what you will see next is a 404 error
Eric suggested FTP uploading a blank .htaccess file. I experimented with a couple of my "cat blogs" and found it wasn't neccessary.
Here's why: When I clicked on the post title, the system automatically created an .htaccess file.
However, it takes a certain amount of time for the new .htaccess file to be recognized by the GoDaddy servers. This is true even if you manually create a new .htaccess file and upload it yourself.
The average wait on the blogs I tested was 30 minutes.
So, here are Eric's instructions modified for GoDaddy
1. Click Settings
2. Click Permalinks
3. At Custom Structure type /%postname%/, click Save Changes
4. Click View Site
5. Click on any post tile
6. See 404 error
7. Go out and water the garden, play with your dog, or watch TV.
8. Come back in about 1 hour, view site again, click post title again. Bingo, now it works.
And here's the reason I found in one forum: new .htaccess files are only processed once per hour by GoDaddy -- From my limited testing it seems it occurs at the top of the hour....
Yeah, GoDaddy isn't all to great when it comes to hosting. I bought their hosting along with my domain name back when I didn't know better, but now that I have another hosting account with HostGator I wish I would have just used HostGator from the start.
The only thing that has kept me from moving over my sites to HostGator is the wait time between servers and all that fun stuff.....
Good to hear you got it sorted out though, having the title as the permalink makes for a cleaner looking url and a lot easier to read.
Posted by: Jarret | September 28, 2008 at 03:56 PM