How to change permalinks to show categoryname/post-name?

Question

I've placed the string below into my custom permalinks input but it does not appear to have any effect...

/%category%/%postname%/

I'm trying to insure that my post links are in the form of /category-name/post-name

Answer 1

Without a link to the site in question, it's hard to understand the exact problem. However, if the issue is the actual word "category" is being includes (i.e. example.com/category/category-name/post-name) then I would use this plugin (it's one I use on almost every site)

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-no-category-base/

Answer 2

It could be 3rd party wordpress theme conflict. Temporarily enable the default WP theme and test.

Also note:

For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text "page slug" as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties). So, it is best to have at least two path segments in your post's permalink structure such as /%year%/%postname%/ or even /posts/%postname%/.

Source: Wordpress.org Documentation