Posts 404ing after permalink change

Just for grins (yes, just humor me here) try changing to the “month and name” style please.

I think the key here (when you see these parenthetical thoughts you know I’m guessing… *cough*) is your chosen style of permalinks. But, before we pursue that, let’s just see if one of the other more standard types works or doesn’t work.

Again, if I don’t see this message when I change permalinks thru WP admin, it means that my .htaccess file IS writable by WP, right? If that is the case, why, then are my pretty permalinks no longer working?

Usually, that’s what it means, yes. 99% of the time at any rate… there are indeed “edge” cases though.

Chris, I changed to “month and name” style, and the links went 404.

The permalinks style that I was using for the last year was:
https://americaninlima.com/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

When I go into the phpAdmin site of cPanel and look under wp_options for my site/database, under permalinks it says that my style is
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

What isn’t matching here?

I’m pretty much just about almost all the way stumped…

So here’s the last thought: Would you be willing to set your theme to Default and disable all your plugins? Then test.

It would be nice to eliminate plugins… you have a few old versions installed and I’m wondering if they’re the issue (yes, still grasping at straws here, but really we should’ve tried this yesterday!)

As for that last permalink experiment: You had mentioned “day/month/year/entry-name ” and I’m pretty sure THAT would cause issues (day before month before year). However, you’ve since stated you were year / month / day which is not an issue.

Okay, Chris. I will take the plunge: revert to Default (that’s Kubrick, right?) and eliminate the plugins, not just disable.

I feel like I am pulling the plug on Hal here.

yes, I was wrong when I initially stated my permlink structure as beginning with the day. I corrected myself with year / month / day, which is what it is, or, rather, was.

I will post back after the experiment.

Something weird is happening. I successfully deleted all of the plugins except for one that I could never make work on my blog:
WordPress.com Popular Posts.

Now when I am trying to delete the plug-in thru my WordPress Admin dashboard, I get this message:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘)’, expecting T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM in /home/amerdra/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpresscom-popular-posts/uninstall.php on line 2

Is this significant, that I can’t remove a plug-in?

How else can I get rid of the thing?

Not sure if that’s significant or not.

To delete it you could try using the cpanel file manager or an FTP client and just delete the darned thing.

Chris, I deleted that last plug-in through the cpanel file manager, so now there are none.

While I was there, I checked out my .htaccess file and discovered something fishy: my .htaccess file has been changed (not by me) since yesterday. (I let MidPhase tech support have my access info so it was probably them.)

Yesterday the .htaccess file was 204 bytes and had the normal WordPress code.

Today the file is just 35 bites and it reads:
# BEGIN WordPress

# END WordPress

That is it.

Could this be part of the problem? If so, what should I do? Make a new .htaccess file? I have never done that before.

Hi, Americaninlima,

We have been duplicating our efforts to help you solve your problem. I seem to be offering the same information to you on thread topic 254723. Chris_K has offered some great suggestions, many of the same I offered in the other thread. I suggest we concentrate our efforts in this thread.

okay, let’s stick to this thread.

Hi, Americaninlima,

I checked your site this morning and it looks like your permalinks are working. I would be interested to know what you did to fix them. I think it would be useful to include the information in this thread.

OOPS! I see the pretty URLs but the displayed page is a 404 page:

Easy, tiger. This is a 404 page.

You are totally in the wrong place. Do not pass GO; do not collect $200.

Instead, try one of the following:

Looks like your problem is still alive and well.

Yeah, rtivel, the pretty URLs lead to 404 pages. I am majorly bummed.

Yesterday I tried to fix the problem by uploading a new .htaccess file. I changed my links back to pretty URLs and crossed my fingers. I gave it a few hours just in case my server needed time to adjust. But the links don’t work.

I also eliminated all plugins (actually scrapped them entirely).

I will check what it says on the other board, to see if I missed any possible solutions. If I haven’t, I wonder what my next step should be? Revert to the old?

I am having trouble keeping in mind everything that you have already tired. However, …

(1) With permalinks enabled, if you write and publish a test post, does the new post display normally (with the pretty URL) when it is selected? In other words, is your customized permalink working for new posts and just not working for your old posts? If this is so, then …

(2) If I remember correctly, if you use the default permalink setting (and no .htaccess file), your old posts then display normally (with ugly URLs). Right? Well, if this is so, you might try loading up Permalinks Moved Permanently, a plugin that might allow you to change your permalink structure and still find the posts.

rtivel,

To answer:
(1) When I enable pretty permalinks, the customed permalink does NOT work for new posts, nor for old ones.
(2) With default permalinks, I can post new entries and my old entries display fine.

So, it appears that I can use this pluglin (?) Permalinks Moved Permanently to sort of fix the problem, as far as retaining old traffic.

Do you think it’s worth trying to restore my backup version and seeing if the pretty URLs work with that? Or is that an iffy proposition and I’m better off just going with Permalinks Moved Permanently?

I don’t even like the admin area of 2.7 so much. I’m okay going back to 2.6.