Using permalinks Help Please

I am having trouble understanding exactly how to use permalinks. Im new to the whole SEO and etc. I never really paid much attention I always used word of mouth to advertise. But the problem I am having is when I set up a permalink to include postname, it says page cannot be found?

If this happening to your wordpress then your server not updating your htacess file automatically.. go and edit it manually

Also if you have Wordpress you can try downloading a free Wordpress plugin 404-to-start then all of your not found pages will be automatically re-directed to your home page or whatever page you define.

Kushfellas,

If you are modifying permalinks in the WP backend, try refreshing the page that you follow the link from before clicking on it. Sometimes the old page in your cache will still be directing you to the old link. Also, in the WP backend (depending on the version of WP you are using), you can modify permalinks for a specific page when editing that page or for the site overall. Did you do a customer structure or one of the options provided by WP?

This article from Yoast gives some tips on changing these settings,

http://yoast.com/change-wordpress-permalink-structure/

Hope that helps,

Shawn