htaccess code for 301 redirect: need help

wordpress, 301

[pro101]

Hi all: I've recently discovered that using /%postname%/ only for permalinks on Wordpress posts is not scalable. My site has currently a small number of posts (25) and about 35 pages. Likely I will eventually have 100s of posts, so before it's too late it seems I need to change Permalinks.

I need to redirect from:
[domainname.com...] to [domainname.com...]

I believe I need to make changes to the htaccess file and add a re-direct, from /%postname%/ to /%post_id%/%postname%/. Any idea how to do this? First time trying to do such a thing. The re-direct will need to only apply to posts, not pages.

My current htaccess file looks like this:
# BEGIN WordPress

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress
=====================

Any clues on line of code that will do the trick will be much appreciated!

[g1smd]

There is no way for .htaccess to deduce the value for post_id when a user requests a URL with post_name in it.

This has to be a job for your PHP script as it will need to look things up in the database before it issues the redirect using the PHP HEADER command.