.htaccess

upload a blank file called .htaccess
Open notepad or another text editor and save a blank page as “.htaccess” including the quotes.

Sometimes the .htaccess file is set to “hidden”. You may have to look for an option/setting in your FTP client to be able to view the file.

I’ll try the uploading a blank file idea first. Will I need to add anything to it once it is up?

OK that worked. I have an .htaccess file now. However, I got a message at the top that says that I should update my .htacess file, and a note at the bottom says “if my file was writable….” so I followed the link, did the chmod so that it is writable, and I still have the error. What now?

try a hard refresh? or use your ftp program to check the CHMOD value of the .htaccess file?

Not sure how to hard refresh. I have cleared all cookies. I checked the CHMOD in FileZilla, and that’s ok – 666.

cntrl + f5

Thanks. Did the control+f5. I still have the same problem. I copied the text from the permalinks box that should be in my .htaccess file and copied in manually. Saved it. Hard refreshed again. I still have the same problem.

so you’re getting the problem that says it can’t write to the .htaccess file? or some other error?

I am getting teh problem that says that I can’t write to the .htaccess file. I read in earlier post on this problem, mine, that my .htaccess file shoudl have a section that begins “# BEGIN WordPress” or I won’t be able to write to the file. Any idea what that is about?

well, if you put up a blank .htaccess file, wordpress will take care of the rest. are you sure that you put it in the correct place?

I put it in the same directory as the index.php file. I deleted all of the text that I had placed in there before. I hard refreshed for good luck, and I am still unable to write to my .htaccess file. The line at the top of the page says “You should update your .htaccess now.”

that’s weird, but I though WP still gave you the code you could copy an dpaste yourself.

It does. I just downloaded the .htaccess file. The file was empty. I copied all of the text from the permalink box. Saved the file. Uploaded it by ftp to the same location, chose to overwrite the old .htaccess file. Now I get a 403 Error – forbidden You don’t have permission to access /wp-admin/options-permalink.php on this server. So I am going to go back in and take the text out and I’ll be back at square one.