Why is wordpress telling people my pages don't exist??

Did you recently upgrade WordPress? One thing you could try to do is flush the rewrite rules. It looks like you are using custom permalinks… try going to settings->permalinks and just clicking the “save changes” button. This will force a flush_rewrite. If that doesn’t fix the issue, then try changing your custom structure to a default just to see if it works. You can always change it back after…

I did recently upgrade wordpress… but just to the 3.1 version. And yes, the trouble started after I updated. (I haven’t updated to the 3.3.1 yet.)

I also did do the flush rewrite for the permalinks a few days ago, and unfortunately it didn’t fix the issue. But my permalinks are set to “day and name” not custom. I’ll try setting them to the default… Not to sound naive, but what’s the benefit of having them not set to default? (In other words, why doesn’t everyone just go with the default? Will it be bad for my site to change it to default and then just leave it that way?)

Sorry for all the questions!

No worries on the questions… that’s how we all learn.

Using the default option would make your links look something like https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/?p=12345… this typically isn’t very “user” friendly.

For instance, one of your loyal followers would turn to their friend and say “hey, check out Chocolate Covered Katies’ new post about cupcakes… it’s at https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/… what’s that weird number thing at the end?”

And therefor it would be hard to have people go right to that post. Most people who install wordpress will use a custom structure of /%category%/%postname%/. This will show a pretty url such as https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/cupcakes/dark-chocolate-brownie-batter-dip/… much easier for a user to remember and share with their friends.

Even using the Day and Name might be a little confusing. You could always use the custom structure I just mentioned and see if that a) fixes your issue and b) makes things a little easier to manage on your end! Let me know if it works.

If you have problems after an upgrade follow the standard debug initially to isolate the problem.

The normal debug.
– deactivating all plugins (yes, all) to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s). If you can’t get into your admin dashboard, try resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems. Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder if you have one. The easiest way is to rename that folder to mu-plugins-old.

– switching to the Twenty Eleven theme to rule out any theme-specific problems. If you can’t log in to change themes, you can remove the theme folders via FTP so the only one is twentyeleven. That will force your site to use it.

Ok, I tried the permalinks and plugins suggestions… no luck.

But it seems like the ONLY people who are getting the 404 error message are people using google chrome.

I’m not sure why this is… does anyone have any ideas??

I’m not sure… I’ve tried on a few different machines now, and it seems you resolved the issue. Maybe the people still experiencing these problems are seeing cache related issues on their own machines? How many “complaints” are you getting?

If you know someone who’s having an issue, ask them to clear their browser’s cache. If they are using Chrome, have them click the wrench in the upper right corner, then go to “options”. From there, click on “Under the Hood”, then “Clear Browser Data”.

See if that helps… other browsers will be similar to clearing cache, but it will be named something different. Give that a go and let us know from there. If you don’t see the issue, and I don’t see the issue (on at least 4 different machines and browsers), then it must be with the end user at this point. Cache has good intentions, but sometimes it stinks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_cache

Thanks wpismypuppet!

I think you might be right; that it’s now a cache thing… the only post people have reported lately as a 404 is this one:

https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2011/12/05/deep-dish-cinnamon-roll-pie/

Can you (or anyone reading this) see that post in Google Chrome?

I get a 404 in Chrome on this link but see it fine in Firefox.

https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2011/12/05/deep-dish-cinnamon-roll-pie/

Katie – since you’ve isolated this as a Chrome-specific problem (fascinating!) you could also try posting in the Chrome troubleshooting forum here:

https://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/label?lid=43d46e8d92fef559&hl=en

https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2011/12/05/deep-dish-cinnamon-roll-pie/

I got a 404 on this link in FF 10

just now

I also just got a 404 on the same link in Chrome

Same in IE.

Your permalink settings in the dashboard should look like this,
/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

Your .htaccess should look basically like this

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

Have you contacted VPS about this problem? I think a random 404 error could be a server problem.

[edit]There are also errors https://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fchocolatecoveredkatie.com&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0

Unfortunately, I’ve talked extensively with my host (Servint) and they say they don’t know what’s wrong. They restored my database for me, but apparently it didn’t fix the problem.

Hmmm… as for the error link you gave me, is that for w3 total cache? Maybe that’s what’s causing the issue? If I uninstall it, is there a better cache plugin I should be using? My blog gets a lot of traffic, so I’d be afraid to not have any cache plugin installed.

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone has for me!!

The link is for html errors. I don’t think they are causing the problem but it would be best not to have errors.

I don’t know anything about servers but I think that is where the problem is. You can see some info here.
https://redbot.org/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fchocolatecoveredkatie.com