“Permalink” is a shortening of “permanent link”.
A permalink is a URL that points to a specific blog entry even after the entry has passed from the front page into the blog archives. Permalinks can be formatted in different ways.
By default WordPress uses links containing question marks and number strings, which are neither visitor friendly nor search engine friendly.
It’s important to change the permalink structure for your site as soon as you can, and definitely before you start writing any content!
In your WP Dashboard, go to Options/Permalinks. You will see that the default structure is enabled. Check the box marked ‘custom’ and enter: /%category%/%postname%/ in the custom structure box. This will return a URI of: yourdomain.com/n/name-of-your-post/ where ‘n’ is the number of the post assigned within WPM.
You don’t need to change the category setting and if you leave this box as it is, the URI of a category will be:
yourdomain.com/category/name-of-your-category.
Hit “update” and when you get the confirmation of successful update message, immediately go to cPanel or your FTP program and CHMOD your .htaccess file back to 644.