Why won’t my permalinks work without index.php?

What happens when you don’t use the index.php in there? What do you see then?

Is the site running on Linux/Apache or Windows/IIS or Windows/Apache or what?

Have you checked the .htaccess file to make sure it exists and is correct?

Lots of things could cause it. The trick is figuring out what actually is causing it. ??

It’s running on Linux. And the .htaccess file is there but I haven’t edited it since WP didn’t give me anything to add to it. I feel like WP 2.03 used to give some stuff to add to .htaccess when you changed the permalinks but newer versions don’t. Is that correct?

Anyway, I changed to the default presentation and edited the permalinks to what I want. Now it gets an error message when selecting categories but it’s not my WP 404 error. It’s just a blank screen with:

Not Found
The requested URL /wp/category/gallery/category/ was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

What is the content of the .htaccess file? You’re correct that you don’t have to edit it, but you still need to check to make sure that it is actually correct. ??

Also, what exactly are you changing the permalinks to? What is the content of the fields that you changed? Some things work, other things won’t. We need to know exactly what you have in those permalink boxes.

Alright, I pulled the .htaccess additional content from another site of mine and now it works. How come WP doesn’t tell you what you need to add anymore? That’s insane.

EDIT:
this is what was in there:

# -FrontPage-

IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>
AuthName https://www.MYDOMAIN.com
AuthUserFile /home/tag/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.pwd
AuthGroupFile /home/tag/public_html/_vti_pvt/service.grp

and this is what I added:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /wp/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

How come WP doesn’t tell you what you need to add anymore? That’s insane.

WP will add the necessary code to the .htaccess itself if it can, but if it cannot, it will indeed tell you what to add when you change the permalinks. Scroll down next time.

I have the same problem. It has worked fine on previous installations, but on this it insists on adding index.php. I realized there was no .htaccess file in the WP directory, so I created an empty one and tried updating the permalink options again. It is still not working, and the .htaccess is still empty.

What should I do?

Start by answering Otto’s questions in his first post to this thread.

What happens when you don’t use the index.php in there? What do you see then?

Is the site running on Linux/Apache or Windows/IIS or Windows/Apache or what?

Have you checked the .htaccess file to make sure it exists and is correct?

There’s also quite a bit of troubleshooting info at the Permalinks page.

1. I get a 404 error:

Not Found
The requested URL /2006/12/30/test/ was not found on this server.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

2. Linux/Apache

3. The .htaccess file exists – I created it – and is empty.

3) it can’t be empty if you want non-default permalinks. IF WP isn’t populating it directly, you’ll see a message at the bottom of Options -> Permalinks (scroll down!) telling you what should be there.

I have scrolled down. There’s nothing there, I promise.

What directory is your blog in?

That’s the .htaccess you’re looking at, right?

My blog is in public_html/addondomain, and there’s where the empty .htaccess file is as well.

ok, color me stumped.

How about this: Change that .htaccess to be read-only. Now, revisit Options -> Permalinks and Update.

This time it’ll display contents of what should be in .htaccess. Manually add them and save .htaccess.

Does that work?

No. ?? It only says “Permalink structure updated”, nothing else, but it still doesn’t work. I have also tried reinstalling WP several times.

Can I write something “by hand” in .htaccess?