Custom permalink disorganizes after save

Hello all,

I’ve been trying to get my WP 2.0 site to create links so that it looks something like this: https://www.domain.com/parent_category/child_category/postname

To this end I went to the permalinks subpanel in WP options and entered the following in the custom field:

https://www.domain.com/%category%/%postname%

It successfully modified the .htaccess.

However, it seems that after saving WP converts my custom entry above to the following:

/http:/www.domain.com/%category%/%postname%

The result is that posts on my site have the following permalink:

https://www.domain.com/https://www.domain.com/category/post-name

Although this is somehow functional, it is clearly not practicable. I have reverted to the default setting for the timebeing. Does anyone know why this is happening? I will appreciate any and all help.

I would also like a method to link to the main category pages similar to above ie. https://www.domain.com/category rather than the current https://www.domain.com/index.php?cat=ID

Is there a method to accomplish this.

Again, I am grateful. Although WP is an exceptional program in its own right, this forum and the astonishingly detailed and beginner-friendly codex are the clinchers. They have both saved me countless delays as well as unnecessary forum posts.

This particular problem, however, I am unable to figure out.

Thank you all.
Uzer