Making your post links pretty

Pretty permalinks are links that are more pleasing to the eye than standard links and, ultimately, more pleasing to search-engine spiders. (See Book V for an explanation of why search engines like pretty permalinks.) Pretty permalinks look something like this:

http://yourdomain.com/2011/01/01/pretty-permalinks

Break down that URL, and you see the date when the post was made, in year/month/day format. You also see the topic of the post.

To choose how your permalinks look, click Permalinks in the Settings
drop-down list. The Permalink Settings page opens.

In this page, you can find several options for creating permalinks:

✦ Default (ugly permalinks): WordPress assigns an ID number to each

blog post and creates the URL in this format: http://yourdomain.
com/?p=100.

✦ Day and Name (pretty permalinks): For each post, WordPress generates
a permalink URL that includes the year, month, day, and post slug/title:
http://yourdomain.com/2008/01/01/sample-post/.

✦ Month and Name (also pretty permalinks): For each post, WordPress
generates a permalink URL that includes the year, month, and post
slug/title: http://yourdomain.com/2008/01/sample-post/.

✦ Numeric (not so pretty): WordPress assigns a numerical value to the
permalink. The URL is created in this format: http://yourdomain.
com/archives/123.

✦ Custom Structure: WordPress creates permalinks in the format you
choose. You can create a custom permalink structure by using tags
or variables, as we discuss in the following section.

To create the pretty-permalink structure, select the Day and Name radio
button; then click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.