stvc

I changed my Permalink settings to “Post name” again, and looked in the root directory using the Bluehost cPanel File Manager and I don’t see any .htaccess file. I do see some other files that start with a period (e.g. .htpasswds), so I don’t think it’s a hidden file problem. I didn’t get any error messages when I changed my Permalink settings.

I’ve seen some other sites that indicate I need to update my .htaccess file with redirects when I change my Permalink settings. I also found a tool that automatically generates these redirects, but when I ran the tool it indicated I didn’t need to do anything because it indicated WordPress would automatically generate the redirects for me.

The Permalinks are being handled correctly now that I changed them back to “Plain”. I suppose it might be useful to compare the .htaccess file when Permalinks are configure to “Plain” versus the .htaccess file when Permalinks are configured to “Post name”, but I’m getting a bit nervous about messing any further with Permalinks at this point because I’m worried I might mess things up beyond recovery.

I changed the Permalinks back and forth one more time earlier to investigate the answer for the question about the sample for the old and new links. After I changed the Permalink setting back to “Plain” the sample page I was investigating still gave the 404 error. I tried shutting down and restarting my browser but encountered the same problem. So I deleted my browser history data at which point the sample page I had been investigating started working again, which is why I think some of my problems might be related to browser history data.

I’m not sure I really fully understand the difference or the interaction between Permalinks and Slugs, but I was following the recommendations on the following website:
https://www.nosegraze.com/slug-wordpress-tips-url/

I edited the Slugs for my Pages based on the recommendations on the website above. I also changed the Permalink settings from Plain to “Post name” at which point I started getting the 404 error. When “Post name” is configured in the Permalink settings, I believe the Slugs are used on the end of the URL for a page (e.g. “/definitions/” in my earlier example) instead of the default (e.g. “/?page_id=100” in my earlier example).

I’m not sure it makes sense to look at my .htaccess file at this point as I’m back to using the defaults for now and things seem to be working again, but I was hoping there was a high-level procedure for achieving my goal without resorting to manually editing the .htaccess file.

I tried that several times even though I thought perhaps this only applied to Categories and Tags versus Pages.

Tara: Thanks for the tip. I disabled the MOJO Marketplace plugin and that seems to have fixed the problem. Now if I could only figure out how to install an SSL certificate to protect user information during the registration process.