Suddenly custom permalinks not working (reverts to numeric)

  • Suddenly in the past week, my custom permalinks are not working. I noticed first that there were a lot of 404 errors for which i couldn’t find any reason. I went to the permalinks settings and set them to default, and then back to custom, but they keep reverting to numeric no matter what i do.

    I deactivated every single plugin (including WordPress SEO) and the problem persists.

    I had my custom structure set to:

    https://www.myswebsite.com/archives/%post_id%

    where post id is the slug that i manually edit in the post edit screen.

    Unfortunately i haven’t been backing up my site (lesson learned!) but i can see all the post id’s (i.e. the custom urls i set manually for each post) still exist in the “quick edit” section of each post, as the “slugs”, so i am hoping once i can get the custom permalinks to SAVE, all will revert and be fine.

    Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?

    I am using the Thesis theme, with WP 3.9.1 and it’s possible i updated some plugins in the past week that caused this, but as i said, deactivating them all has not helped.

    Thanks in advance of any help anyone can offer.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Thread Starter Tika Mazul

    (@oceanazul)

    RESOLVED (for now at least).

    I changed:

    https://www.myswebsite.com/archives/%post_id%

    to:

    https://www.myswebsite.com/archives/%postname%

    and it all works now.

    Did something change wherby it used to be that i should use %post_id% but now it’s %postname% ? Or more likely a plugin that I’m using changed their settings/variables or something? I have no idea. I got %post_id% from somewhere because i didn’t just make it up.

    Bewildered but happy ??

    Thread Starter Tika Mazul

    (@oceanazul)

    UPDATE:

    The above fix did not work on a permanent basis, and each time i had t reset the permalinks to default, and then back to

    https://www.mywebsite.com/archives/%postname%

    and then a short while later the custom permalinks would not be working again, and there would be lots of 404 errors. Rinse and repeat to no end.

    I finally discovered that I think the following plugin is the culprit:

    SEO Slugs WordPress Plugin

    It seems when i deactivate this plugin, the site stays intact. I don’t know what happened to suddenly make this plugin cause problems, since I’ve had it for years and all has been fine until recently. It could be because of recently installed additional plugins: Worpdress SEO and UpdraftPlus Backup. Maybe they are incompatible and cause problems, or maybe it’s something in the newly updated WordPress core?

    Anyway, i deactivated the SEO Slugs WordPress plugin and it seems to be working ok.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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