Root Site doesn't show Pretty Permalinks, but subdomains do

I enabled pretty permalinks, in case anyone wants to check.

Wow they all redirect to your main page…

What’s in your .htaccess?

This is all of it:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]

# uploaded files
RewriteRule ^files/(.+) wp-includes/ms-files.php?file=$1 [L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

Well that’s correct. Wow.

I’d start with switching themes and turning off any plugins that are only on the main site.

I now know that I’m not crazy. This really is weird.

And done. I activated twenty-eleven, and disabled any plugins that only run on the root site. There are a bunch of site-wide ones, like gravity forms, which are still active.

All of my subdomains have perfectly pretty permalinks.

For some reason, https://toddneufeld.com does not.

What else can I do to trouble-shoot this?

I tried using the domain mapping plugin, but it won’t let me map the root site to itself. Any other ideas?

Yeah, you can’t domain map the main site.

Did pretty permalinks work before you turned on Multisite?

Yes, they worked before I turned on Multisite.

What are the sitewide plugins? And do you have any mu-plugins?

I have a bunch of network plugins, but note that most of these were installed AFTER permalinks didn’t work:
– Backupbuddy
– Gravity Forms (and some of the plugins that extend it, like Gravity Forms CSS Ready Class Selector)
– Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades (this should be part of WP already)
– Google XML Sitemaps
– Google Analytics
– Hide Welcome Panel for Multisite
– Multisite Dashboard Switcher
– Nav Menu Roles (love this!)
– Network Plugin Auditor (ditto)
– Redirection
– Widget Logic
– WordPress MU Domain Mapping

note that most of these were installed AFTER permalinks didn’t work:

Yeah… that’s … Um. Bad ?? It’s hella hard to debug now.

Are there any enlightening errors in your error log?

I’m back online!

I pulled up my error log, and it’s really big. What sorts of things should I look for?

At the top are a slew of errors from events-calendar-pro (which I’ll move away from now) and random MySQL and PHP errors.

Enable permalinks, click on one, see what errors pop up.

After some trial and error I finally got an error log working. I used the instructions in the codex:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Editing_wp-config.php#Configure_Error_Log

I have MANY errors like this one:
PHP Notice: Use of undefined constant WIDGETS_RELOADED_DIR – assumed ‘WIDGETS_RELOADED_DIR’ in /home/todd/public_html/wp-content/plugins/widgets-reloaded/widgets-reloaded.php on line 39

This error seems to show up on every second or third line:
[10-Dec-2012 21:41:31 UTC] PHP Notice: Undefined property: stdClass::$site_name in /home/todd/public_html/wp-login.php on line 76

What should I be looking for?

Turn off that plugin (widgets-reloaded)