Custom Permalink Stopped Working

Have you tried to resave the permalink settings again?

Dashboard -> Settings -> Permalinks -> Save Changes

Can you confirm that your .htaccess file looks like this? (default)

# 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

If not, try updating it to the above default version and see if that helps.

Yes that’s what’s in my htaccess file

Yes I’ve tried all sorts of different custom permalink setups. The only ones which seem to leave the site working are ones with only one parameter.

Next step would be to disable plugins one by one to try to identify possible conflict. It’s possible an older plugin causing an issue with a newer version of WordPress.

Hi Viktor,
I disabled ALL plugins and the problem remained. I am now seeing other people raising the same problem in other forums. If you have 4.5.2 WordPress try /%category%/%postname%/ yourself.
Kind Regards
Tony

Hi,

I just dropped by your site to have a look, and the posts are working just fine, I am seeing the URL contains the category as well as the postname.

Hi Marius,

I found a short-term workaround in another forum that involves put a fixed element into the permalinks setting. I used the word ‘blog’ and the permalinks are set to /blog/%category%/%postname%/. My site works again the search engines have my site indexed without the ”blog’ in every post’s URL and all of the external links (e.g. from social media) to my blog posts are now broken. I need a fix that enables me to go back to using just /%category%/%postname%/

Regards
Tony

If you have 4.5.2 WordPress try /%category%/%postname%/ yourself.

I can use that as a Custom Permalink Structure on my own site with no problems, so that would suggest there’s a little more going on in your case.

I noticed you said “Today it stopped working” (which of course, was actually yesterday, but still), so had you already updated to WP 4.5.2 well before that? Or did you just update yesterday, and the permalinks stopped working immediately after that was done?

The other 2 things I would do and check:

1. Switch to a default theme and see if that permalink structure works or not. Outdated themes can cause issues with newer WordPress versions.

2. You can try re-installing WordPress core files. Sometimes files can get corrupted during upgrade and break stuff. Re-installing WP core fixes it.

Hope that helps.

I updated to 4.5.2 after the problem arose. I’ve switched themes on a live site before and it caused chaos to all sorts of settings – not doing that again. The host tells me that there are no problems with the WordPress core files.

Other people currently suffering exactly the same problem and the fact that a workaround that worked for someone else worked for me, strongly suggests that there is some sort of generic problem – albeit it not impacting every theme.

I’m going to wait for core WordPress or Studiopress to fix the ‘bug’. I’ll just have to keep trying the permalink setting that I would like to use until one day it works.

Thanks everyone for all of the input and ideas.

I have one client site with the same problem. I thought it was a SiteGround addressing problem because I have had other addressing problems with them before. But their tech said it’s a “script” problem, meaning WordPress. The site only has 9 plugins: Akismet, BackWPUp, Custom Post Widget, Easy Google Fonts, MetaSlider, Ninja Forms, Robo Gallery, Widget Context and WordFence. Most of these, I have used on other sites with no problems.

Hristo from SiteGround here, I would love to get more info about the addressing problems you’ve experienced with us because I’ve tried pretty much all possible configurations for permalinks and URL structure and everything is working without any problems.

Thanks for your follow-up, @hristo-sg! Here are the details I posted on one of my Facebook pages. Many of my Facebook page users are local: new developers and site owners who are trying to manage their own websites. They use my posts for help tips.

Thanks for that. I’ve just managed to check it out.

Actually, there aren’t any addressing issues on SiteGround at all – just default settings that our 1-click installer Softaculous has. If you perform a manual WordPress isntalltion, you will see that everything is working out of the box the way you expect. Or change the permalinks structure and delete the .htaccess file.

Those defaults are configured this way to satisfy the needs of the majority of our customers. I undersand they cannot be perfect for everybody but honestly, it takes a minute to make it work the way you want. However, we will hopefully have a much better installation process soon and I will be adding note about configuring the URL structure during the setup process ??