All links in WordPress stopped working

  • inge12

    (@inge12)


    9 years ago

    Some time in the last 8 hours or so, the links on my site stopped working.

    I can pull up the home page (after deleting all caches), but no links work.

    In admin mode, I can pull up pages/post in “Edit” mode, but I cannot “View” published posts, but I can “Preview” unpublished posts.

    I have disabled all plugins by renaming the plugin directory, but the problem persists.

    The rest of my site (plain HTML) works as usual, so this is a WordPress problem.

    Please Help! Site: https://ssnet.org/

    UPDATE: It is more than a link problem because, even with the correct URL, public visitors get a “Page not found” error, even though the post is visible in editing mode.

    HELP!! I have no idea what to do.

    UPDATE: I have re-enabled Akismet and Wordfence to prevent possible damage to the site from hackers. (This is a relatively popular site, with about 100,000 individual visits per month.)

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
  • Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    -Try resetting your custom permalinks back to the default setting and renaming your WordPress .htaccess file. If that works, then try reading Using_Permalinks before setting a custom permalink structure again.

    Thread Starter inge12

    (@inge12)

    Thanks for the feedback, Tara, but could you explain why the same permalink structure that has worked perfectly for years with the current .htaccess file would suddenly stop working?

    Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    May something got corrupted. To troubleshooting, try what suggested and see if that resolves the issue.

    Thread Starter inge12

    (@inge12)

    Thank you, Tara.

    Resetting links to “Default” resolved the problem.

    However, the setting I had was the default “Post Name,” and I want it back.

    What could have corrupted it?

    Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    Resetting links to “Default” resolved the problem.

    If that works, then try reading Using_Permalinks before setting a custom permalink structure (i.e., “Post Name”) again.

    Thread Starter inge12

    (@inge12)

    Thanks, Tara. I read that section of the codex before choosing the “Post name” structure without any modification. I can’t see anything that changed on that page. I originally figured that choosing one of the preset options should be pretty safe.

    I need the “Post name” structure because there are thousands of links on Facebook with that structure, and our Facebook page has a weekly average reach of over 100,000.

    I’m guessing I need to re-examine my .htacccess file, but I would feel better if I had any hunch regarding what caused the problem.

    It occurred to me that something may have changed on my Apache server. “Follow symlinks” is enabled by default, but maybe I should check to see if some kind of update disabled it. Am having that checked out.

    Thread Starter inge12

    (@inge12)

    I see my .htaccess file was “updated” yesterday at 14:52 EST
    The current file as 0 bytes. I assume that would explain why the Symlinks were not working.

    Am I correct?
    (Still no idea why my original .htaccess file was overwritten.)

    Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    If you did not do it, then ask your hosting provider if they changed something at the server which might have overwritten it.

    I cannot tell you who,how/why it got overwritten.

    I can tell this that it is not the default behavior of WP core.

    Thread Starter inge12

    (@inge12)

    Thanks, Tara.

    My question was based on the assumption that WP *needs* things in the .htaccess file to use symlinks.

    Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    Is the issue resolved?

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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