WordPress and the Evil 404’s

oh i should mention the feature came with the server I was with. Im on the phone with them to ask about it.

got it. i just deleted .htaccess

though now my 404 pages are that from my server, at least that little spell check trick still works

shit. this just messed everything up
it only works if im working with the default Permalink structure.

so the kicker is how can i keep this fancy un named trick and my Permalink structure?

so the kicker is how can i keep this fancy un named trick and my Permalink structure?

You cannot. Sorry, but the two are incompatible. Either you let WordPress handle its own fake directory structure or you let your server do it based on the real directory structure. But you cannot have it both ways.

Here’s what it amounts to:

Your server was doing this spell check + closest match trick. The way it works is that, when you get a typo, it looks at the directory structure and sees if there’s anything close to it, then redirects to that.

WordPress, on the other hand, builds this large pretend directory structure called Permalinks. Your spell check trick won’t work on this for two reasons:
a) The server’s trick relies on those directories being there to match up against the typo, and WordPress’s permalinks are not real directories for it to see.
b) WordPress’s pretty permalink trick relies on *all* traffic being sent to WordPress and letting it figure out how to handle it. The server’s processing gets completely bypassed. That’s how WP can change its pretend directory structure on the fly.

So the short of it is that they’re probably wholly incompatible. Sorry.

Hmm on the other hand. Correcting all the captial “.JPG” to “.jpg” is much easier than dealing with WP sans Permalinks.

or it isnt but thanks for laying out so clearly for me.

i loves the support.