About worked instantly, but I had to fiddle a bit to get Archives to work

As the headline said, when I changed the permalink structure as instructed, the “About” page worked instantly. However, I kept getting a 404 message for the “Archives” page.

Thankfully, I didn’t change the .htaccess page. Instead, I found this page on creating archives and about pages which was helpful.

1. Log into your WP Administration panel and click on the Presentation link.
2. Assuming you have the Cutline theme activated, you’ll notice a link in the sub-navigation menu called Cutline Options.
3. On the Cutline Options page, simply check the box next to “Enable the Cutline Archives Page.”
4. Click the Update Options button to create the Archives page.
5. In order to ensure that your new Archives page gets published properly, you’ll need to click on the Manage link in the main navigation menu.
6. Once there, click on Pages in the sub-navigation menu.
7. One of your pages will contain the text “Archives” in the Title field – find that page, and then click on the Edit button for that page.
8. Locate the Save » button (which resides just beneath the main text entry box), and click it. You’re done!

The only problem was that when I went to step 6, there was no “Archives” page. So I created one, with the text box blank, and hit “Save.” Still no go. So instead I hit the “Publish” button, and this time it worked.

By the way, the instructions appeared to be for WordPress version 2.1. I have version 2.2 installed, so that may be the problem. I hope this helps others with similar issues.

Update:  by the way, the creating a “Archives” page tip came courtesy of PaulThology.