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Ok, plugins folder has plugins name and Adventurous theme is on. The only thing I wasn’t able to do is use the postname permalink. As soon as I did, my blog page couldn’t be found again. As soon as I switched it back to the default permalink, it worked again. Is there anything I can do to get that to work or should I just not worry about it?

Overall, my “leave a reply” works and I can’t thank you enough!! ?? I really appreciate your patience and it has been a pleasure working with you as well.

Also, I just wanted to double check that this issue was caused by the w3cache plugin so I should not reinstall that plugin is that correct?

tbtforsolotravelers, I haven’t abandoned this–or you.

When you try to save the permalinks, do you get a message that WordPress can’t write to the .htaccess file? When that happens, you should be able to click a link/button to give WordPress write permission to it. Does that occur when you change permalinks & save settings?

You ask me about total cache. Right now I’m uncertain. I’d like you to be able to get “pretty permalinks” working–it helps w/search engine optimization, at least somewhat. Sometimes, when troubleshooting, it’s just best to remove stuff that isn’t absolutely necessary so as not to cloud the issue. Once the problem is resolved, then we can reintroduce stuff & see if things continue to work or if that particular component was the culprit. I’d like to get something other than the default permalinks working, then we can reintroduce your caching plugin & see how that goes–or not, as you prefer.

?? Thank you! SEO is definitely a big deal to me so I appreciate you helping me get to the bottom of this.

It looks like it works no problem when I switch to postname. All it says after I save is that I should update my htaccess file. I did double check that both my .htaccess and htaccess have “writable” checked. When I change back to the default permalink it just says permalink structure is updated.

tbtforsolotravelers, in your VDeck control panel, under the ‘Website’ heading, there should be a .htaccess editor.

It’s been a really long time since I used that setup, so I’ve forgotten a lot about it, but when you click that, does it show the .htaccess file? If so, could you please copy & paste it here? Thanks!

Well, it has an .htaccess editor and when I load it, it says:

Current .htaccess Files
Click to load a directory and manage its settings.
/wp-content/backup-1408114840-plugins/akismet/
/wp-content/uploads/backwpup-c537be-backups/
/wp-content/uploads/backwpup-c537be-logs/
/wp-content/uploads/profiles/
/wp-content/uploads/backwpup-c537be-temp/
/wp-content/plugins/si-contact-form/captcha/cache/
/wp-content/plugins/p3-profiler/templates/
/wp-content/plugins/p3-profiler/languages/
/wp-content/plugins/p3-profiler/exceptions/
/wp-content/plugins/p3-profiler/classes/
/wp-content/plugins/akismet/
/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/cache/
/wp-content/plugins/bwp-minify/min/
/wp-content/backup-1408067036-plugins/akismet/
/wp-content/cache/page_enhanced/
/wp-content/cache/minify/

O, brother! I forgot about IPage’s rather annoying habit of putting .htaccess files in every folder!

What I’m not seeing though, & it troubles me deeply, is a .htaccess file in just your public_html folder.

Can you confirm for me, tbtforsolotravelers, that there is 1?

Well, I contacted iPage and they said:
On our platform, there is no ‘/public_html’ directory. The root directory is ‘/’.

Boy, it has been awhile! Either that, or my brain’s turning into a sieve. I guess it’s been almost 2 years since I switched, though, so guess I’m entitled to forget. Apologies. Sigh. What can I say? Nonetheless, I don’t see a .htaccess there. Could you please confirm for me by looking at your file manager or via an ftp client that 1 actually exists?

No problem. The only files I can find are the htaccess file where we removed the “.” yesterday, and the .htaccess text file that we created yesterday.

tbtforsolotravelers, the .htaccess file we created yesterday–it doesn’t have a .txt extension, does it?

yessss :-/ I just created it in Notepad and uploaded the file hmmm….I was supposed to save it as a different type of file wasn’t I?

Yes. If it has a .txt extension on it, it will absolutely not serve the intended purpose. Could you please rename the file to just .htaccess i.e. get rid of the .txt extention, try changing the permalinks to post, & see if that works?

Sorry. When I load a new file, it forces me to pick an extension. Am I not loading the file correctly?

Everything you did was so appreciated. Have a great weekend!