Wordpress permalink structure change issue

Question

I have seen some other posts on SO about this issue, however none of the suggested solutions did work for me, so I repost.

After changing my permalink structure to /%postname%/, none of the links is working. I get the following 404:

Not Found

The requested URL /my-post-name/ was not found on this server.

Apache/2.2.20 (Ubuntu) Server at mysite.com Port 80

When I get back to the default permalink structure it starts to work again, but I want to have /%postname%/ structure anyways.

My .htaccess file's chmod is 777.

After updating my permalink structure to /%postname%/, the .htaccess file generated by Wordpress is the following:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Any thoughts?

Edit:

I tried to change permalink structure to the following:

/index.php/%postname%/

and it happily worked. However, the problem is now, not surprisingly, the links are in the following form:

www.mysite.com/index.php/my-page.com

My question is how can I remove index.php from my links. When I remove it from the permalink structure (i.e., /%postname%/), my links no longer work.

PS: Instead of using blog entries I use only pages in my site. If it is necessary my site is: mll.sehir.edu.tr.

score 12 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 20 '15 at 00:19

There are many ways how you can fix this issue, if you know the root of the issue.

Problem 1

Firstly, it may be a problem with your apache not having the mod_rewrite.c module installed or enabled.

For this reason, you would have to enable it as follows

Open up your console and type into it, this:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Restart your apache server.

service apache2 restart

Problem 2

You may also, in addition to the above, if it does not work, have to change the override rule from the apache conf file (either apache2.conf, http.conf , or 000-default file).

Locate Directory /var/www/

Change the Override None to Override All

Problem 3

If you get an error stating rewrite module is not found, then probably your userdir module is not enabled. For this reason you need to enable it.

Type this into the console:

sudo a2enmod userdir

Then try enabling the rewrite module if still not enabled (as mentioned above).

To read further on this, you can visit this site: http://seventhsoulmountain.blogspot.com/2014/02/wordpress-permalink-ubuntu-problem-solutions.html

Amazing answer. Very good that you are touching issues that are not completely related to the `.htaccess` file. +1! — blo0p3r, Mar 20 '15 at 00:17

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 21 '12 at 20:01

Sounds like a problem with symlinks on your server. Try this in your .htaccess and also please change it to 644 after making the change:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 18 '12 at 11:53

1

I had the same problem but i am using other url structure /%category%/%postname%/

The problems with de 404 error is because even if you set a certain structure, wordpress is always trying to create the urls with the word "category" on the url.

Try to type your urls like this: yoursite.com/category/postname, if you are not getting any error now is because we are close to resolving the error. Now try to install this wordpress plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/no-category-base-wpml/ to remove the "category" base from urls

Let me know about your progress

answered Oct 18 '12 at 11:53

Pedro

691
1
6
17

After setting Permalink structure to `/%category%/%postname%/`, links are still not working. I checked the `.htaccess` file. It is the same too. Should `.htaccess` change after I change the permalink structure? – Sait Oct 18 '12 at 13:49
Not i am using the default wordpress .htaccess. The same as you posted it. Did you tried to install the plugin that i told you? – Pedro Oct 18 '12 at 19:54
Do you have installed apache mod_rewrite? – Pedro Oct 18 '12 at 19:57
Yes, apache mod_rewrite is enabled. Since first part of your propose haven't succeeded, I didn't go on to the second part. – Sait Oct 20 '12 at 07:46

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 22 '12 at 09:07

0

Replace and try your .htaccess with this:

Options +FollowSymlinks

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hostname.com$

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hostname.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]

answered Oct 22 '12 at 09:07

Vijaya Narayanasamy

468
4
16

John Yin · Answer 5 · 2014-07-26T13:46:12.767

I got this issue whenever i try to enable my site's permalink to mod_rewrite: "Pretty Permalinks". My site is one instance on AWS EC2.

404 Errors 

Page Not Found
The requested URL .... was not found on this server.
Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) Server at mydomain.com Port 80

I tried all above methods, but not being fixed.

At last, I checked the /etc/apache2/sites-available/wordpress.conf, I found I used public IP address assigned to each instance by AWS. Once I change it to the current mydomain.com, it's working.

Sometimes, wordpress.conf would be locked by httpd (web serser), we need to stop and start it after edit. We also need to use: sudo service apache2 stop/start so as wordpress.conf could be reload again.

Hope my experience could help others.