WordPress MU

Hi

I'm setting up a WPMU community - currently running WPMU 2.7.1 and BuddyPress 1.0.1.

PERMALINKS
I want to activate permalinks so when I blog, the URL is:
http://bucksboardroom.com/category/post-name/

rather than my current setting:
http://bucksboardroom.com/year/month/day/post-name

I have read the Using Permalinks info (http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks). I host with pSek and have confirmed that I have the Apache's mod_rewrite module installed.

For some reason, I cannot locate the Permalinks option in the admin menu. The Using Permalinks info says it should be under Settings → Permalinks, however, I don't have Permalinks as an option under settings... do i need to install a plug in or something to add Permalinks to the Settings menu?

EXCERPTS
I also want to get Excerpts working on the main blog as described in the documentation at:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/the_excerpt

At the moment, the entire post is visible in the blog post list. I would like to change this so the Excerpt is visible in the blog post list, not the entire blog post.

Having the whole post in the blog post list is simply too long, and there's really no point to clicking through to the post as all the content is there in the blog post list...

You can see what I mean at:
http://bucksboardroom.com/blog

I'm new to WPMU and am not a competent coder, so I'm hoping there's an easy solution to getting both these features working.

Any help the community can provide will be hugely appreciated.

"The Using Permalinks info says it should be under Settings → Permalinks, however, I don't have Permalinks as an option under settings... do i need to install a plug in or something to add Permalinks to the Settings menu?"

Nope, no plugin - they are there. Try this link:
http://bucksboardroom.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

For the excerpt, you have to find your blog's theme files under wp-content/themes/ There will be a file in there called index.php, and within that, look for the_content. Change it to the_excerpt.

Hi andrea_r

Thanks for the guidance, you're an absolute star!

Thanks to everyone in the community that helps us non-technical folk work out our problems!!

Does starting the permalink structure with a category rather than the date interfere with performance?

It shouldn't.

so you cant use both systems of links? the yearly and then the catgories links?