permalinks .htaccess

Hello,

I needed to change my blog permalinks to be in the format https://www.name.com/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname% so I entered the value in custome structure field “/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%” , but I always got a 404-error on the new links structure while it works perfectly if I added “/index.php” at the beginning of the custom structure to be like that “/index.php/%year%/%monthnum%/%postname%”.
I noticed that .htaccess file is always empty in all cases. I think it should have some data to make permalinks work ??!!

Any help guys ?? ?