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  • http://www.health-boundaries.com/2014/04/24/dangerous-fabrics/

    I’m getting notices from Google’s bot about 404 errors. The above link it what I was given by Google. When I click on it I don’t understand what I see. Is that a page that WP provides of all my posts? or is it a WP 404 page?

    I also get 404s because the bot can’t find my comments feed. I mostly don’t approve comments because they are mostly spam.

    How can I remove the feed thingie, whatever it is, and not get this error?

    I would GREATLY appreciate your help with this, as I am totally confused and don’t know how to correct it.

    Karen

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
  • Hi, Karen:

    A 404 error means that the page is not found. In other words, it’s a bad link.

    Did you make a change to your permalinks recently? Because the current address for that post appears to be:
    http://www.health-boundaries.com/dangerous-fabrics/

    I think it would be a good idea to go back into your permalink settings (Settings > Permalinks) and pick the one labeled Day and name. That way, if you happen to have two posts with identical titles, it would be easy to distinguish them from one another. Plus your link will work and not give a 404 error.

    To get rid of the feed links, go to Appearance > Montezuma Options > Head > Meta tags, then uncheck the box that’s labeled Feed links. Unfortunately you can’t just disable the comments feed, you also have to disable the general feed as well. But if you want to add the general feed back in, you can copy & paste just that section into the Insert Code section of the options.

    Thread Starter considerthis1

    (@considerthis1)

    Hi CrouchingBruin, you’re like the silver lining in the otherwise dark cloud of … bafflement.

    I know what a 404 is, the thing is that all those pages exist. They are posts, though, not pages.

    I have a plugin that I can use to direct a 404 page to a real live page, but I don’t understand what’s causing the 404s.

    Is each page shown on the 404 page a 404 page in itself?

    I’ll go do that now, about unchecking the Feed links. I just wondered if Google was actually saying that they had to be there or there’d be a 404… I must be having a very dense day!

    Thread Starter considerthis1

    (@considerthis1)

    Okay, I think I fixed the 404s on that site.

    On another site I have 12 403 errors: Access Denied… and all of them have to do with Login php. I mean, that sounds silly to me. Why is the bot crawling my login…????

    Or, maybe the question is, what did I do wrong to make the bot think it should crawl my login…?

    Did you change your permalinks recently? Perhaps your feed used to have the old address before you changed the permalinks. Or else maybe the last time Google indexed your site, you were using the old permalinks. As I mentioned earlier, if you go to the post, the address doesn’t look like a post address, it looks like a page address. That’s why I suggested changing your permalinks back to include the date. If you change your permalinks to include the date, then your post addresses will look like post addresses, and your page addresses will continue to look the same (without a date).

    Thread Starter considerthis1

    (@considerthis1)

    Hi CrouchingBruin,
    Yes, I think it has to do with permalinks because I don’t use the date format, I can’t remember time very well, and each of the 404s seemed to have a date in it. Some of the 404s happened before and I already had 301s for them, so I’m still a little baffled.

    I think that page that shows up must be the WP Not Found page. It’s not among my pages, so I guess it’s in the Control Panel. I hardly ever go there.

    I was back up to 700+ page views, but this seems to have dropped me down again.

    My old site on Yahoo appears to have hidden the http results, and I have 35 Not Found among them b/c the php I used to do permanent redirects to my new sites appears not to work for the http version.

    You must have a Wonderfully clear mind to understand websites so well.

    I’m really glad you help the rest of us!

    Karen

    OK, so I would try changing your permalinks back so it includes the date. That should eliminate those errors.

    If you create a virtual main template called 404.php, that template will be used when a page can’t be found. Otherwise, the virtual index.php file (which displays your blog entries) gets used. This is in accordance with the WordPress Template Hierarchy.

    Thread Starter considerthis1

    (@considerthis1)

    I’m unclear why you think the date in the permalinks is a good thing. To me, it’s what’s causing the problems. I think the date gets in there when I make a new page and publish before I choose a name.

    I’m thinking that the reason why you are getting the Google 404 errors is because your posts used to have the date in the address, but then you may have switched to a different permalink style to remove them, so now Google can’t find the right page. The date doesn’t get in there when you first create a new page, it shows up in the permalink when you choose that particular permalink style. You turn them off & on through the permalink setting.

    I think if you look at most blogs, posts will include the post date in the address (permalink), while pages do not. That will help prevent confusion if you happen to create two blog posts with the same title.

    Thread Starter considerthis1

    (@considerthis1)

    Hi CrouchingBruin ~ I’ve been thinking about your reply. It alerted me to what the problem may be. See, I didn’t understood the permalink thing for months and months. I read about it, but didn’t get it.

    I don’t do blogs, I do pages because my site is basically a site. I do a few blogs because they offer a way to be seen that’s beyond my basic menu.

    But, when I’m stressed I sometimes choose “new” in the Admin Bar and fail to properly choose New Page. WP offers Post as the default, not exactly, but sort of. So if I don’t pay attention I get a post that I then have to make into a page. Which is harder than it probably should be.

    That may be why the errors keep showing up, because I’ve used the 301 redirect plugin to “confirm” that they are pages, not posts, but Google may want posts if they started out as posts.

    Thank you a lot for helping me see this problem from a perspective that seems to make it clearer.

    Karen

    Ah, OK, that explains a lot. Yes, it looks like some of your pages were actually created as posts, because when I view the source of the Dangerous Fabrics “page,” I see class names for the body element which indicate that it is a post rather than a page.

    Thread Starter considerthis1

    (@considerthis1)

    Hi, Yes. And that’s a fairly recent page, so even though I knew about the distinction, I failed to get it right. Sigh.

    What do you know about the canonical thing? I kept getting Google errors because my site, I forget whether it was the www or non www, wasn’t verified. Even though my Yahoo site is over a decade old, I was still getting a problem with that.

    When I began on WordPress and I couldn’t work out how to verify one form or the other, after I got one verified I deleted the other.

    What is the effect of having done that, do you think????

    What do you know about the canonical thing?

    I didn’t know anything about it until I saw your question, then I did some Googling on it. Two of my sites correctly redirect the www version of the address to the non-www address, but one does not. Trying to use Google Webmaster Tools to change it. I did successfully verify my site, but it looks like I can’t change it right away for some reason. Maybe I have to wait a day or two.

    Thread Starter considerthis1

    (@considerthis1)

    Hi CrouchingBruin,
    Happiness! I’m happy to have brought something to you that you can use.

    I’m not sure how the canonical thing works, but maybe it has to do with the DNS thing and any change takes an hour to a day…

    I think all my sites are backwards, non to www. I wish Google explained things as clearly as you do.

    Have a happy Week! Thank you for all your help!

    OK, I figured out what was wrong with my www site. In Settings > General from the WordPress admin dashboard, I had the www as part of the site address. I just took the www part out and it redirects correctly now.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 18 total)
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