404 with google webmaster tools not recognising the site

You have unexpected whitespace (either a space or an entire line) on line 10 of the /wp-content/advanced-cache.php file. See this guide for more info.

Alternatively, replacing the file with one from a fresh download may resolve the issue.

As for the permalinks, please check with your hosting provider to make sure that mod_rewrite is installed and active on your server.

Thank you James, I’ll leave this thread open for a while to make sure everything is ok.

I just need to find out why custom permalinks are not working. I did edit the .htaccess myself after reading a thread and then copy and paste. That maybe why it worked afterwards because I know I tried all the options in permalinks before.

I will also check with my hosting provider as you suggested to find out about the mod_rewrite. Thanks again ??

Yes, please let us know about mod_rewrite. If that isn’t installed or active on your server, custom permalinks will never work.

Hi James, I finally resolved the problem. it had nothing to do with the mod_rewrite being active on my server.

I feel a bit silly really because I traced it back to a previous thread. On that thread I had a problem with how my categories displayed. Everytime I clicked a category in my navbar it would display a page with all my categories.

It was suggested that I use %category% in my category base. Well that did what I wanted and separated the categories but then caused the 404’s.

Also when I tried to add the correct code to my .htaccess file it wasn’t registering.

So in my mind I went back further and remembered that I had pretty permalinks before for at least 5 months.

I checked the .htaccess file and I had old code in there from ithemes security which was denying access to the .htaccess file for security reasons. So I took drastic measures and deleted the .htaccess file.

The mod_rewrite code stayed put then.

Anyway it still didn’t work! I was so baffled lol until I came back in here and looked up my old threads. All I had to do was delete %category% from the category base and now everything is fine. I do learn but I learn the hard way. Hope this silly thread helps someone else who’s daft as me in the future. Thank you James for your help and patience its much appreciated.