Please sir, may I have my pages back?

May 21, 2010 2:23 PM

When I create a new page on my Wordpress blog, it's unaccessible via the permalink (i.e. "www.mydomain.com/pagename"). All I get is a 404 error. I can only access pages using the "www.mydomain.com\?page_id#" link. What gives?

Background:

I own my own domain, hosted by dotster. I'm running version 2.8. I can't upgrade to the newest version yet, trust me, I've tried.

I noticed the problem when I tried to switch to a new wordpress theme. All my page links switched from /?page_id# to /pagename and were rendered inaccessible.

I tried creating a test page, but when I clicked on 'view page' after creating it, I got a 404 error.
I've looked at previous questions, but I'm not a coder, I just dabble in HTML and CSS.

I'm really fed up with both dotster and wordpress. I'd get rid of wordpress, but it has a decent online HTML/CSS editor, which dotster doesn't offer on its own. I'd get rid of dotster, but I just renewed a 2 year hosting contract.

GRAR!

posted by chara to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

So for the /pagename trick to work you need a .htaccess file in your root directory.

Did this get blown away somehow?

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks
posted by bitdamaged at 2:28 PM on May 21, 2010

(in particular)

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#Where.27s_my_.htaccess_file.3F
posted by bitdamaged at 2:30 PM on May 21, 2010

If you look and find you still have the .htaccess, it's likely your host will not allow it.
posted by xmutex at 2:44 PM on May 21, 2010

+1 for running through the standard permalinks instructions.

One thing I have experienced in the past is that there's a slight, stupid delays on parsing .htaccess files, or they seem to not be read unless you delete the .htaccess file and then re-upload. Some kind of caching with some hosts.

When this happens I usually rename the file .htaccess.BAK, go to a page on the site, then upload a fresh .htaccess file and revisit the site.
posted by artlung at 2:54 PM on May 21, 2010

if the proper .htaccess file doesn't fix it, you need to make sure that you have mod_rewrite enabled in apache. that's the module that checks the requested url and 'rewrites' it to the actual url based on a series of rules. the clean urls won't work without it.
posted by iamscott at 3:17 PM on May 21, 2010