/do/ folder not existent since version 4.6.2?

…anything on this?

Thanks for the hint!

My problem is: The URL is “hardcoded” in the “Subscribe” item of the template “GreenNature”, so I guess I’ll have to tell the developers of the theme to update this to reflect the new URL.

…could’ve thought of that myself.

Excellent advice, works flawlessly, thank you! 🙂

Hi @alexis123987,

usually, every WordPress installation ships a file named .htaccess (there really is nothing before the “.”, which is, under unixoid OSes the indicator for hidden files). You should see it when you connect to your webspace via FTP or SFTP, in the root folder of your WordPress installation (where the index.php, wp-config.php and a bunch of other root WordPress files reside). It should, by default, look 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

This tells the webserver (note: this ONLY works with webservers that respect .htaccess files, which is usually Apache – it won’t work with nginx, for example): Whatever is behind the / in the URL (for example: for https://www.yourdomain.com/my-fabulous-blogpost/ that would be “my-fabulous-blogpost/”) and doesn’t point to a really existing file, treat it as a call to index.php and let the script interpret the URL instead of the webserver software.

So now you can use this logic to “simulate” that there is a file called /wp-content/plugins/newsletter/do/subscribe.php, but the webserver will internally call the URL /index.php?na=s (call to the Newsletter Plugin) and let it handle this.

Long story short: Make your .htaccess file look like this:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on 
RewriteRule ^wp-content/plugins/newsletter/do/subscribe.php$ /index.php?na=s [L]
</IfModule>

# 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

Changes should be reflected immediately, and it should work instantly. If it doesn’t, your webhosting provider is either caching .htaccess files (unlikely) or not using a webserver software like Apache which is capable of handling .htaccess files. In that case, you may either ask them to configure such a rewrite rule directly in the webserver configuration, or you’re out of luck.

Also, please note that some WordPress updates and/or hardlink settings will change the .htaccess file and may delete your inserted lines, rendering the problem unsolved again. So you may check after every update, and also from time to time, if your rewrite rule (i.e. the first 4 lines of my example above) are still present in the file.

Hope this helps!

@alexis123987

Sorry for the late reply, I was offline for the last two days – but I’m happy to hear that it worked for you, and you’re welcome! 🙂

@satollo

Yes, this would of course be the “cleanest” option – but in my specific case, it’s a hard-coded content element of a theme called “GreenNature”. The form action for the newsletter element is fixed in a more recent version of the theme, but the web developer who bought the theme vanished into thin air, so I have no possibility of updating it without buying it again.

Thus, the mod_rewrite hack is the only way to go for me now, unless I find a way to contact him again.