Permalink problem

Hey Snowyn,

Sounds pretty frustrating. Are you able to post some links to your site so we can check things out there?

Thanks!

Very frustrating. Site is
https://phoenixhealingarts.net

What works: home, resources, health-concerns page and subpages.

What 404’s: about and subpage, services and subpages, contact.

I’m wondering if maybe something in the database that keeps track of the permalinks got messed up.

Very strange indeed! What do you have on your “Settings -> Permalinks” page? What have you chosen for the sites Permalinks there?

/%category%/%postname%

And James — thanks so much for your assistance. (Going a little crazy here.)

Been there, gone crazy myself, Snowyn! No worries.

I’ve seen some issues on researching your challenge but nothing quite “exactly” like yours.

Have you tried reverting to the “default” permalink structure (https://phoenixhealingarts.net/?p=123) to see if you are able to access those currently 404ing pages? If you’ve not, try making that change for a hot second, save and see what happens. Then go back to your preferred permalink structure of https://phoenixhealingarts.net/category/postname.

Fingers crossed!

This is unreal, I just came in here to see if anyone else has this problem. I have been working on it for two days. It seems like when I updated WP this started to happen, not sure but about that time.

This is also slowing my PC down because as long as I am in WP my browser keeps looking for my site. Oh I forgot to put that in here. https://www.temp.lowercostelectricityprovider.com Also, this page I was working on (is not my home page). That is fine, if I could just get it to not 404 I can easily rebuild it. It is only a one page website. Thanks ahead of time for the help

Hi James,

Yup, tried that. When going back to default page numbers, (a) I have to use the default twentyten theme in order to see them, but (b) yes, they are all there, visible, and accessible through the navigation.

However, even in the twentyten theme, going back to permalinks I get the server 404s.

Tried this at least twice, maybe three times. I’ve also checked the htaccess file in both situations. When I go back to default page numbers, htaccess returns to its “blank” variety. Shifting back to the custom permalink, htaccess becomes

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

# END WordPress

which is identical to what WordPress says it should be. That is, I’m assuming it makes no difference about the blank line above # END WordPress.

I’m now looking in the database to compare working pages with nonworking pages to see if there’s anything weird there. So far, not really, but it’s slow slogging…

@snowyn Yeah, Apache will disregard the white space/blank line after the closing bracket, IfModule, so no worries there.

Must admit, you’ve got me pretty stumped here! Do post back if you find any general (or specific) weirdness trudging through that sloggy database of yours ??

Apologies for not being more help ??

@temp4845 The www is keeping anything from showing up on your temp site at all. But of course, just removing that then displays your 404 page ??

Do you have WordPress Multisite set up? Or is this a single WP install in the “temp” subdomain? Also, do you have your DNS set up correctly to point the subdomain requests to the proper directories on your server?

The reason I ask is because pinging the “temp” subdomain site gives me a different IP number than pinging the TLD site (lowercostelectricityprovider.com).

@jameskirk: Please keep helping me think about this. I did find a php file that shows what the permalinks are for each page — and it shows them working correctly. (See below if you’re curious.)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3464701/export-list-of-pretty-permalinks-and-post-title

There are no differences between the pages that get 404s and the ones that don’t. I revised it to show me the guid in the database, and again, no differences. (That is, most pages show just the site url. Two pages add the page number to the basic url, but one of these has the 404 and one is behaving correctly.)

I’m getting really stumped here. I guess my next step is to find out more about when/why a server 404 occurs in the first place. If you have more thoughts on what to think about next, I would Really Appreciate it!

Wow you are way over my head James. I do have two wp sites but I have not started building the other one yet. DNS I know I should know what that is but I don’t. It has been years since I have done anything like this and it is a HUGH learning curve for a 68 year old guy. I really appreciate you taking the time on these forums, I know you are doing it on your own time and I commend you for that.

James I think I know what I did. You mentioned two wp sites got me to thinking. I did start on the other site and I downloaded WP, I think I may have two WP’s installed on the same site. Is that possible? When I go into admin I see the site I want but when I click view site is when I get the page not found message.

i would even start all over, the site is not hard to make, but I would like to figure out what I did wrong so I don’t do it again.