Strange Permalinks behaviour

  • Resolved EmbadoBen

    (@embadoben)


    10 years, 5 months ago

    Hi WordPress peeps. I’ve got a strange issue with my Permalinks not working. Here’s a quick overview and below that is a more detailed write up.

    ***QUICKIE***
    Had to move a wordpress site to a new folder on the same server at the same level.

    When permalinks are set to anything other than ‘Default’ only the homepage loads, no matter what link I click on.

    If I click on another menu item to say https://myurl/pagename all it does is reload the index page (no error messages or 404 page or error messages within wordpress when changing the permalinks), but https://myurl/?page_id=123 will work fine!

    The htaccess file is working as expected (see below).

    ***DETAILED***
    I was developing a site on a live server and it was installed inside another wordpress installation (which has been fine throughout the process).

    During the testing permalinks worked fine and the client gave the ok for it to go live.

    This meant renaming the folder so I went in to settings and updated both the WordPress Address (URL) and Site Address (URL) to the new folder name (the new folder was empty at this point).

    This brings me to the part I think I did wrong, I already had a front-end page open in another tab and was double checking some content so did a refresh meaning I was viewing the site in the old folder but with both the URLs updated to the new folder name!

    I realised what I did and why it wasn’t working so copied all the core files over to the new folder then did a retest by loggin in under the new folder name. That worked fine.

    Once in the new folder dashboard I updated all the database URLs then changed the permalinks a couple of times to make sure the htaccess file was working (it was).

    I noticed that the site would only work if permalinks were set to default. I checked that wordpress was writing to my .htaccess file by deleting all the info in it then changing the permalinks, wordpress wrote:

    # BEGIN WordPress
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /acornblue/
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /acornblue/index.php [L]
    </IfModule>

    # END WordPress

    There are no error messages in the browser or on the screen (not getting taken through to my 404 page).

    There’s nothing in the server error logs.

    Essentially every link just reloads the index page when permalinks are turned on.

    This is driving me nuts, I’ve looked for solutions but everything I’ve tried has failed to make a difference and I’m now at a complete loss (I’m more a graphic designer than a programmer but have a good logical mind and tend to fix most issues I have with wordpress). Hoping someone here has had this issue before!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • I suggest something: Check the last time .httaccess is modified via FTP and be sure that by updating permanlink this file is getting updated. this problem mostly comes when there is not a right / enough permission to update .httacess file.
    Check it again and let see if this can lead us somewhere.

    Thread Starter EmbadoBen

    (@embadoben)

    Hi Dannial. Thanks for the reply. I downloaded the htaccess file and deleted all the content from it so it was just:

    # BEGIN WordPress

    # END WordPress

    I then ftp’d it back up and changed the permalinks on the dashboard and re downloaded the file where it then had:

    # BEGIN WordPress
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /acornblue/
    RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
    RewriteRule . /acornblue/index.php [L]
    </IfModule>

    # END WordPress

    So it has the correct permissions. It’s a really strange issue.

    Since posting I’ve also set up a dummy site that’s an exact copy with the same issue then over-wrote all the core wordpress files with a fresh download from wordpress. That didn’t fix it. I’ve already tried everything relevant from Moving WordPress page, none of which worked!

    It’s getting to the point where I’m ready to admit defeat, take a content backup and start from scratch ??

    Thread Starter EmbadoBen

    (@embadoben)

    The really strange bit is that it’s not going to a “page not found” error. It loads the URL but shows the home page???

    Could you please send me the URL to this installation?

    Thread Starter EmbadoBen

    (@embadoben)

    Link

    Permalinks are set up to default at present so it works as it’s live. I can’t change it to where it breaks till this evening when the site traffic slows down to a crawl (3 hours time).

    Thread Starter EmbadoBen

    (@embadoben)

    Daanial, thanks for trying to help but I’m going to go down the road of a fresh wordpress install and then import in the old content. The time it’ll take to do that is measurable whereas trying to fix something like this by going from one option to another can be endless.

    It would be better to understand why it’s happened, what broke and how to fix it but time is my enemy on this one. Thank you again for having a look in to it.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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