calvin gilbert

For some reason WordPress will randomly stop displaying blog posts or news updates. One day your page will be live, and then next gone.

What is happening?

My best guess would be that WordPress is not obeying the permalink structure in your .htaccess file. When you run a blog on WordPress, you have the option of choosing how you want pages shown. By default pages will show up as calvingilbert.com/?p=1234. This is an ugly and un google friendly way of displaying your website pages. By changing your permalink structure, you can have this page now show up as calvingilbert.com/king-of-content/.

Briefly put, the .htaccess file is a small text file that can manipulate your websites directory structure (?p=1234 to /directory/), or redirect out dated content to new content.

When WordPress tries to look at this file, I think it is failing to interpret it and causing the page to return an error.

.htaccess? How on earth do I fix that?

I found an easy fix to this problem, and WordPress can manipulate the .htaccess file for you.

Step 1: Locate Settings >> Permalinks in  your admin menu.

Step 2: Click save to regenerate the file structure.

That is all you have to do. Once you hit save changes, go back to your website and it should be error free.

Tags: errors, page not found, wordpress