WordPress Permalink Settings

When setting up a new Wordpress Blog website the default permalink setting looks something like this http://www.endthetrendnow.com/?p=123.

The problem with this structure is visitors will have a hard time remembering the actual URL since the URL contains just a number. It is also not very SEO friendly, since the actual URL will not contain the keywords you're looking to rank for.

I see a lot of Wordpress websites where the URL has dates in it.  Is this a good permalink setting?

Normally the sites that should employ this type of permalink structure would be news sites, where a date might help in organizing material.  It has also been known to lower traffic and CTR from older search results.  When people see an older date in the URL, they may not click on the link, since they think the link is old or out of date.