I think I just figured it out. I was missing the .htaccess file which was hidden and thus not copied/duplicated.
I’ve duplicated my wordpress folder on my ftp server as a backup in case anything goes wrong. One is called wordpress and one is called wordpress2. When I switch the names, my blog shows up but I can’t click on an individual post.
The main page hostname.net/wordpress/ shows up, but when I click on an individual post, the URL might be hostname.net/wordpress/2011/09/20/blog-post-title/ and I get a 404 error.
I’m trying to get a sense of why this is happening. It seems like my backup won’t be useful if I can’t use a copy of the folder to replace something if I mess up.
thanks again for all your help!
Thanks. so just to reiterate. I should follow the manual update instructions and do it 5 times with each incremental upgrade (2.7, 2.8, 2.9, 3.0, 3.2.1). Is that correct?
thanks