I warned you there would be more rants on the way. Here's one.
I love open source apps. Really, I do. Free is so warm and welcoming, isn't it? But open source support - well, that's a whole 'nuther ball game. That's not always so warm and welcoming. Let's take one example. How about, hmmm... WordPress! I love WordPress, I surely do. But trying to resolve a problem at their forums is often like trying to cut off your arm with a butter knife (both slow and painful).
Sorry, Lorelle, I have the utmost respect for you, but telling us to get help from the WordPress forums, rather than asking for help via a blog post, just isn't facing reality. You say:
I'm finding a lot of people still asking for help with their WordPress and WordPress.com blog by blogging their request. This is really dumb, folks. You dont know who is reading or how qualified they may be to help you. Or you might never get the help you need.
Ok, I'll admit that we don't know who is reading or how qualified they may be to help us, but that last sentence just is begging to be argued with. Or you might never get the help you need. See, that's how I feel about the WordPress support forums. And much of the time, the "help" is in the form of snarkiness. (Actually I could also argue that I don't really know who might answer my question at the WP forums and whether or not they are qualified to help me either, but I won't try to argue that one this time around).
So, yes, I've been trying to find an answer to a WordPress issue that I've had on this blog for a very long time, and the WordPress forums have been no help. (Here's one thread you can check on but there are many others related to the problem, with many of them having not even one reply, and none having an actual answer that I could find).
So, I am asking all of you for help. If anyone knows how to resolve this problem, I would be very grateful. At some point in the last year, when I upgraded from 1.x to 2.x, (don't remember the exact versions), something got foobar'd. Now, whenever I create a new PAGE, the pretty permalink for it gets 404'd. New POSTS work fine. OLD PAGES work fine. But new pages (which also includes tag pages), always lead to a 404.
I've checked everything I can think of. .htaccess just has the generic WP code in it. Nothing weird there. I've compared the database records of old pages to new pages, and don't see anything different, or missing, etc. I've deactivated all plugins to make sure one of those wasn't creating a problem. I've tried recreating the permalinks so the htaccess rules would get rewritten numerous times. Other WP blogs that I have on the same server work fine - no issues for any of them. Just this blog. Just for new pages/tag pages. So, I'm stumped. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.
WordPress can be tricky. It seems most of the time when it comes to support you get what you pay for. I have had similar problems like the one you describe. I found that my problem was coming from an improperly functioning plugin. Also if you are caching the pages it may be causing the error. Another problem I found for wordpress, kind of like restarting windows, is to make sure the DB tables are optimized and up-to-date. If everything is up-to-date. Doing a fresh install and setting up a new DB may fix it up for you.
Thanks, Chris. I already checked to make sure it’s not a plugin problem, and I’m not caching the pages, so it’s neither of those. I haven’t optimized the db tables, so that may be worth a try. I’m hesitant to do the fresh install/new DB thing, just because I’m scared of mucking up 4 years worth of posts. 🙂 But I suppose if I have several backups of backups of backups, I can’t go wrong, right? 😀
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