WordPress Fixes for HTTP 500 and HTTP 404
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This post adds to the collection of fixes for the dreaded WordPress HTTP 500 and HTTP 404 errors users can encounter after an update . In particular, the article targets the scenerio when default Permalink settings (e.g. http://pitelspot.com/?p=123) work, but not custom structures (e.g. http://pitelspot.com/2009/04/sample-post/) which produce HTTP404 errors. Below, I have summarize solutions that the community has offered and contributed my own fix — as I could not find it anywhere. These solutions are listed in order of frequency they were found.
COMMON FIXES FOR WORDPRESS PERMALINKS
(1) Go to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php, click the Default radio button, Save Changes, restart Apache, verify that post links work, then revert to you original Custom Structure (e.g. /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/), Save Change, restart Apache, and hopefully it works.
(2) Delete the hidden .htaccess in your WordPress root directory. If your folder has correct write permissions, WordPress will create a new .htaccess, otherwise it will report an error. Fixing write permission depends on you host OS .
(3) Make sure that your Apache settings file httpd.conf has directory settings similar to
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
(4) Make sure that LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so is enabled in Apache setting file httpd.conf (that was what was wrong with my server).
I hope this concise summary was useful. Please do not ask me personally what is wrong with your server as I am not an expert and there are just too many variables involved. Feel free to discuss your issues amongst other users in the comments.
Fix #2 partially fixed my problem. Other than deleting the htaccess file, I had to go to the permalinks page in wp-admin and save it in order for the new htaccess is created correctly.
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