RSS feed shown instead of posts/pages

Would you please give us a link to the site with the problem?

Also, is there any way you could ask the same university to upgrade from the 2-year-old version full of publicly known security holes? That’s really not safe for an institution, well it’s not safe for anyone really.

Yes, sure, here is the link: https://perso.unifr.ch/fabian.dorsch/

The problem goes away if I disable permalinks, by the way.

I raised the issue with the IT department of the university, but I don’t expect it will have much of an effect in the near future. It takes them already more than a month just to provide the initial wordpress installation…

Wow, I have never seen anything like this.

Try deactivating all plugins. If that resolves the issue, reactivate each one individually until you find the cause.

If that does not resolve the issue, try switching to the Twenty Twelve theme to rule-out a theme-specific issue (theme functions can interfere like plugins).

Thanks for the suggestions! I already tried both, but no changes. The problem persists even with TwentyTwelve and no plugins activated.

Have and of the core files been customized? Can’t you access the .htaccess file at WordPress’s main directory?

I have no idea about whether any core files have been customized, this part of the installation is hidden to me. The only files (apart from plugins and themes) that I can see are wp-config and wp-load, which however just link to their hidden counterparts. I can add an htaccess file to the root folder, but am not sure whether it actually gets noticed.

In any case, what should be added to the htaccess file in order to prevent the behaviour that is currently happening?

Thanks a lot for your help and patience. I’m getting more and more resigned to switching to build my site with Jekyll or something similar, since there I’m not dependent on the IT people from the university for any updates, etc. I run several other WP sites and never encountered a problem like this.

PS: Since I need the site to work as much as possible, I currently switched off permalinks which removes the problem for the time being (as already mentioned). But it’s not the kind of solution I would like have long term, so any further suggestions are still much appreciated.

Yeah, whatever is going on is not normal for WordPress, at all. I’m getting the feeling they modified something somewhere, on top of forcing you to use a 2-year-old version full of publicly known security holes.

When you switch on permalinks, does it create/modify the .htaccess file, or give you some code to put in it?

No, it doesn’t change the .htaccess file at root level that I have access to, which shows, I guess, that it doesn’t do any real work. But thanks a lot for your help!

Try deleting the .htaccess file (save a re-named duplicate first), then re-save your permalinks. Does WordPress create a fresh .htaccess file? And, if so, do the categories work properly?

After deleting the .htaccess file, WP does not create a new one. The problem is now different and less prominent, but still there. If I access a page for the first time (e.g. after a restart), it is still often the case that the rss feed shows up instead. But once I refresh the page, it shows up normally and continues to do so. So, an improvement, but still not exactly how it should be like.

Ok, that’s really weird, that it’s random.

Just to be sure, you tried with *all* plugins disabled, even ones you felt were too important to deactivate for the test?

I’m a bit stumped at this point, I’m thinking something must be way off in the server configuration, or WordPress’s core files were somehow modified.

The problem goes away if I disable permalinks, by the way.

Woah.

Do you have any weird caching on the server or proxying so that it’s not REALLY on the domain it claims to be on?

I don’t have any information about the caching and domain. I just see part of the folder structure on the server, but this structure has no resemblance to the url under which the blog is accessible. So there must be some rewrite command at work, but I don’t have access to it.

Ok, more than likely it’s the configuration of the proxy at fault. Is there any chance you could relay Mika’s question to your IT department?

At the very least, it appears that the fix will beyond what you have access to at the moment. ??