drrober

I deactivated all of them, and site was still down (well, first page was up but all links were getting 404 error).

So I called GoDaddy again, and the rep said he’s seen a lot of this lately. He suggested going to PERMALINKS (under Settings on left side of dashboard), and clicking a different radio button. Then save. Site still not working. He had me switch it back to my previous selection (which was ‘page name’ radio button) and save again. Site came back up! I can’t believe it was down for a month from some stupid plugin. That error has cost me a fortune. Ugh.

I’m going to go back in and reactivate my plugins one at a time and see if I can figure out which one is duplicating my .htaccess file.

My web host says they don’t support 3rd party plugins, and they said one of the plugins is causing the .htaccess file issues.

STRIKE THAT… the front page is working but not of the other pages are. I have NO idea how to get that resolved.

??

OK I got it working today.

I asked GoDaddy and they just said this:
“I have reviewed this with our Advance Hosting Support team and it appears the issue is being caused by a script in your .htaccess file and is most likely being put there by one of your plug ins. I would also review your plugins.”

I had updated 2 plugins before it went down, so I went in through the back door… I logged into GoDaddy’s FTP File Uploader, I clicked through all the folders and sorted the files inside by ‘date modified’. I found the 2 plugins that I had updated the day it went down, and I DELETED them. THEN I found the .htaccess file, and I renamed it .htaccess1. And it worked! Phew.

The 2 plugins I deleted were called BACKUP and AKISMET. Just in case you want to try to narrow it down.

HTH!

I’m having the same problem. GoDaddy had me rename my htaccess file, and the site came up for 30 seconds (minus proper formatting), then went right back to the 403 error.