Wordpress / .htaccess question

Hi, I'm having an issue with uploading an .htaccess file to Wordpress. This is my first Wordpress blog, and my first foray into .htaccess land. After reading all I could find on the subject I'm at an impasse at this point. I'm trying to create a custom permalink structure on my blog, btw.

Here's what I've done so far:

There was no .htaccess file (I checked hidden files) so I created one in Textpad, named it htaccess.txt, and uploaded it to my server. Then I went into File Manager in cPanel and changed the name of the file to .htaccess, and changed the permissions there to 755. I didn't read instructions anywhere to do this in cPanel, it was just a sheer act of desperation, that's all. And logically I'd assume that I need to do something to further upload those changes, but here's where my cluelessness about WP is showing.

Now I notice that in my WP dashboard under Manage --> Files there's an .htaccess file listed, but when I click on the link I get a 'not acceptable' error message. Hmmm. And like before, under Options --> Permalinks at the bottom of the page it says "If your .htaccess file were writeable we could do this automatically, etc." ("this" being the custom permalinks) and the mode_rewrite rules I'm supposed to add to my .htaccess file.

I tried building a WP blog about a year ago and finally gave up because I just couldn't find enough information about .htaccess files (at my level, anyway) to help me figure this out. So, I'm here admitting complete and utter defeat. <sigh> I really want to build a frickin' WP blog, but there's no point if I can't optimize the URLs using custom permalinks. I'm no dummy, but this is over my head. If there's anyone here who could give me some tips you'll have a friend for life.

Thanks,
Deborah

 

Deborah, PM me your blog URL and I'll try and help you out. I fell into the same trap as you on my first blog.

 

1. Open your cpanel file manager and navigate to the folder with .htaccess
2. Click on .htaccess, you'll see a menu to the right top corner.
3. Click "change permissions".
4. Set it to 777 and save.
5. Login to WP and save the permalink structure.

This should do it.

 

agnivo007,

Thanks for the tip, that appears to have worked! At any rate I'm no longer getting the message on the bottom of the Options --> Permalinks page that contains the mod_rewrite rules I need to add since my ".htaccess file isn't writeable" (there's no mention of it at all now after saving). This looks quite promising, and makes it well worth taking the time to add some content to the blog for a final test.

I'm still getting a 'Not acceptable' error when I click on the .htaccess link under Manage --> Files, with "An appropriate representation of the requested resource /wp-admin/templates.php could not be found on this server." Shall I disregard this, and simply repeat the upload process I used before if I need to update the .htaccess file in future?

Thanks so much for taking the time to offer advice, it was very kind of you!

Deborah

 

Well, there's no need to manually tinker with the .htaccess file (especially in your current level of knowledge)...whenever you need to make a change in the permalinks structure, it should get automatically updated from now on after you save the structure.

Also, the edit page of WP may not bring .htaccess content as it's sorta system file and protected on some servers.

Cheers

 

Yeah, I had a lot of trouble with this, but you don't need to edit htaccess yourself - Wordpress WILL write it correctly, but the problem can be in your hosting companies default config. Netfirms doesn't support full mod_rewrite, for example, one of the reasons I got out of there.