I have been struggling with htaccess and my shared web host and wordpress for 2 weeks. Permalinks in default mode worked but were ugly. When I added suggested code to .htaccess whole site failed. No help from host so I finally tried this:
`Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On`
Since it did not immediately break the site, I went back to permalinks and changed structure to
`/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/`
It updated--amazing--but not to the structure above but to
http:mysite.com/parentpage/childpagename
this looks great but how does it effect spiders and robots?