In most cases, Wordpress does a good job managing your .htaccess file all by itself, but sometimes a little intervention is needed. Or perhaps you want to speed up your server a bit. If so, read on!
It seems like nothing could be simpler. But there are some gotchas with respect to rewrites. The big challenge, though, is that your existing URLs are stored as serialized data, which means that if you do a search and replace on the database, the universe ends, or something like that.
You no longer have to worry about Google ranking your Wordpress archive pages and leaving your main page rotting on the vine, but if you’re happy with that you’re missing a big opportunity. Custom excerpts improve the user experience and help you rank in Google.