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How to Fix WordPress Posts Returning 404 Error

Last updated on October 8th, 2017 by Editorial Staff

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How to Fix WordPress Posts Returning 404 Error

WordPress is a powerful CMS. Sometimes a slight tweak can make your website inaccessible. However, finding a solution for any WordPress problem is extremely easy (check out how to properly ask for WordPress support and get it). In the past we have covered some of the most common problems WordPress users face. Like the internal server error or error establishing database connection. Another common problem that most WordPress users face at some point is WordPress posts returning a 404 Error. In this article we will show you how to fix WordPress posts returning 404 error.

Fixing WordPress posts returning 404 error

Usually in this scenario a user can access their WordPress admin area, their blog’s main page, but when accessing a single posts they get a 404 Not found error. First of all, don’t panic most of the time your posts are still there and completely safe. This usually happens if your .htaccess file got deleted or something went wrong with the rewrite rules. What you need to do is fix your permalinks settings.

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Go to Settings » Permalinks, and simply click on Save Changes button.

Update permalink settings

This will update your permalinks settings and flush rewrite rules. In most cases this solution fixes the WordPress posts 404 error. However, if it does not work for you, then you probably need to update your .htaccess file manually.

Login to your server using FTP, and modify the .htaccess file which is located in the same location where folders like /wp-content/ and /wp-includes/ are located. The easiest thing you can do is to temporarily make the file writeable by changing the permissions to 666. Then repeat the original solution. Don’t forget to change the permissions back to 660. You can also manually add this code in your .htaccess file:

# 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

Fix for Local Servers

Often designers and developers install WordPress on their computers using a local server for testing purposes. If you want to use pretty permalinks, then you need to enable the rewrite_module in the Apache configuration of your MAMP, WAMP, or XXAMP.

We have written a tutorial here on how to enable custom permalinks in WordPress local environment.

We hope this article helped you resolve posts returning 404 error in WordPress. Did this solution work for you? Do you have another solution that worked for you? Please share it in the comments below. We would like to make this article a comprehensive resource for users who run into this issue.