Setting up pretty looking permalinks with wordpress and Apache is very easy. Apache's mod_rewrite functionality makes it a matter of seconds. However, when you are hosting your wordpress blog on IIS, lack of native URL rewriting capability on IIS makes it impossible to have the pretty URLs like seen on Wordpress with Apache.
There is an option though, (almost pretty looking permalinks).The URLs of the posts will be like /index.php/post-title/ instead of /post-title/That is as near you can get to the pretty URLs on IIS by only configuring wordpress.
Wordpress 2.5.1
On wordpress 2.5.1, use the following steps to set up "almost pretty URLs".
- Choose settings from your admin CP
- Click on the Permalink link
- Check "custom structure" radio button
- In the box provided for entering the custom link structure, type "/index.php/%postname%/" without the quotes.
- Hit the save changes button!
You are done. Now there will not be any '?' in the permalinks of your posts. For more information about the permalinks with wordpress, visithttp://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks
There exists some other methods using which you can have pretty permalinks on IIS like using custom 404 redirect support etc. But I have not tryed them yet.