Ok so that’s a pretty scary article, I spent as much time researching what some of the words mean as I did actually reading the article, but I guess if I am to get my head around this sort of thing I’d better get used to it.
I assume that the stuff concerned with ugly and pretty permalinks are irrelevant as they are concerned with creating permalinks and I am having issues with permalinks that are already established.
On the bit titled “Fixing Permalink Problems”
It is subtitled “fixing .htaccess generation issues, but how do I know that that’s what my problem is? Is there a check I can carry out to make sure, or does the fact that my links don’t work mean that my problem is a .htaccess generation issue?
The first step is to change file permissions but I find it both worrying and confusing. It advises that I must chmod the .htaccess file to 666, and then tells me that’s not recommended. It then says that I can change permissions to 660 to make it server-writable, but that will have the same limitations.
So which do I do? Or should I do one then the other? How do I edit with the WordPress editor or what do I need to do once I have made it server-writable?
Hi hogeybogey
First let’s do some troubleshooting steps, Try:
- Flushing any caching plugins you might be running, as well as server and/or browser caches.
- 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 (read “How to deactivate all plugins when you can’t log in to wp-admin” if you need help). Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems. Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder. The easiest way is to rename that folder to
mu-plugins-old
- Switching to the Twenty Fifteen 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
twentyfifteen. That will force your site to use it.
- Updating your permalinks by choosing the default permalink structure or re-saving your current structure at Settings > Permalinks in your admin panel. WordPress will rebuild the .htaccess file. If WordPress cannot automatically edit the .htaccess file, it will provide manual instructions after saving.
- Renaming or deleting the .htaccess file by using FTP or whatever file management application your host provides. Make a backup of the file before you proceed with this step.
Hi keesiemeijer
Thank You Thank You Thank You
🙂
I was unsure about the process of flushing caches, but before I came back for more help I decided to deactivate the plugins, checking my links after every deactivation, and lo and behold it worked!!!
The conflict was with the ithemes security plugin, but I have now reactivated it and the site is still working.
I really can’t thank you enough, it’s a huge weight off my mind
Namaskar
Chris
You’re welcome, I’m glad you resolved your issue 🙂
I had a similar problem to hogeybogey – a number of pages not displaying after the 4.2.2 update.
I deactivated all of the plugins and the pages still didn’t display. However, after reactivating all of the plugins everything worked.
Hi BHolloway
Glad to hear the thread helped someone else too
🙂
