Recovering from Disaster

  • Recently, my WordPress installation got hosed. Actually, I think my PHP installation got hosed. Anyway, I reinstalled PHP5, but after that, I could no longer access WordPress (something to do with a missing MYSQL extension).

    So I reinstalled MYSQL. I then reinstalled WordPress with the latest version (my old version was very, very old). I recreated wp-config.php, matching the same database name, username, etc., as my previous installation.

    The Dashboard shows that all of my posts are intact, thankfully. However, in the browser, I can no longer visit any of the categories; I keep getting “The requested URL /wordpress/category/articles/ was not found on this server.”

    All the categories show up in the Dashboard, so I don’t understand why I’m getting that error message. Apparently, my WordPress recovery is not quite complete; something is missing. But what is it???

    Thanks in advance.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Thread Starter reng2010

    (@reng2010)

    In fact, none of the permalinks work. I cannot navigate to any page from the base WordPress URL. I cannot “Read More…” from any post. I cannot go to the “Next” page of post listings. I cannot go to any “Archives” month/year. I cannot go to any of the “Pages” that were defined for this blog.

    Make sure your .htaccess file is temporarily writable to WordPress and then try refreshing/updating your permalinks.

    Thread Starter reng2010

    (@reng2010)

    Thanks. That worked.

    It turns out, the newly-created WordPress installation for 3.8.1 didn’t have a .htaccess file. So I had to copy over the .htaccess from my old WordPress installation. Which begs the question: Why didn’t my new installation have a .htaccess file? Shouldn’t it be created as part of the WordPress installation procedure?

    It don’t think it’s necessary (strictly from a permalinks perspective) with default permalinks, but as soon as you choose and save permalinks from the dashboard, WordPress tries to create one for you. That’s why you may not necessarily have an .htaccess file on a fresh installation, if there wasn’t one already present in your root directory to begin with.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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