Home page won't open, browser tries to download a file instead

Your “homepage” has the contents

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=https://4x4.smith-it.co.uk">

Check via FTP. what files do you have in the root of your installation?

I don’t know from where it’s getting the REFRESH as originally I’d placed an index.htm in the root which I’ve since removed.

The current files are:

. htaccess
index. php
license_txt
@readme.html
wp-activate_php
wp-blog-header.php
Wp-comments-post.php
wp-config-sample. php
WP-config_ php
wp—cron.php
wp-links-opml.php
wp-load.php
wp-login.php
wp-mail. php
wp-settings.php
wp-signup_php
wp-trackback.php
xmlrpc.php

Please post the .htaccess file from that directory.

# 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

I’ve managed to fix this as there was a file called index.htm.old that contained the HTTP redirect.

I’ve removed this this file and now all is well.

Thanks for you help.

@smithgt This fixed my issue also. I had index.html.bak in my root of my wordpress install.

It was not a problem until very recently. It ran for years with that file there. It stopped working before I did any updates so that made it particularly odd.

Glad I found this and tried it before taking drastic measures. Saved me a lot of time. Thanks!