Making sure that your permalinks work with your server

After you set the format for the permalinks for your site by using any options other than the default, WordPress writes specific rules, or directives, to the .htaccess file on your Web server. The .htaccess file in turn communicates to your Web server how it should serve up the permalinks, according to the permalink structure you chose to use.

To use an .htaccess file, you need to know the answers to two questions:

✦ Does your Web server configuration use and give you access to
the .htaccess file?
✦ Does your Web server run Apache with the mod_rewrite module?
If you don’t know the answers, contact your hosting provider to find out.
If the answer to both questions is yes, proceed to the following section. If
the answer is no, check out the “Working with servers that don’t use Apache mod_rewrite” sidebar, in this chapter.