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The Dreaded 404

There can be many reasons why your forum fails to load and instead receives a 404 status from the server. The most common are discussed below. If you are experiencing this problem, please check through this list as the chances are one of them will apply. If not – please carry out the procedure to rebuild the WordPress rewrite rules.

Redirection Plugin

Do you haver some sort of redirection plugin installed? (Permalink Redirection is probably the most common). If you do then this could be the culprit. There is no need to remove it but you need to visit the plugins options and exclude the forum url.

Check Your .htaccess File

There may be nothing loaded now but some plugins make changes to your .htaccess file which are not removed when the plugin is. If you know how to check this then do so. If not, you can always rebuild the .htacess file from your WordPress Permalinks admin panel. Just click on Update Permalinks.

Does the Forum Page Exist

When Simple:Press Forum is installed it creates a WordPress page. This page is given a default name of ‘Forum’ and a page slug (used in the url) of forum (always lower case). Under rare circumstances the page may fail to be created or possibly created but not published. Navigate to WordPress Admin ☛ Pages ☛ Edit and find the forum page. If there ensure that it is published. If it is NOT there then create a new page with a title and slug of your choice. Finally, check the slug is correctly set in the forum – see the next item.

Check Your Forum Page Slug

You can change both the page title and the slug to whatever you choose but if you do so then you MUST also check the slug as recorded in the Forum ☛ WP Integration ☛ Page and Permalink. Ensure the correct page is selected and update the forum permalink just to make sure.

Have You Had A Different Forum Installed Before?

If you have then it might have created a folder named ‘forum’ which would match the default forum url and find… nothing! if this is the case you need to remove it or rename it so that it does not match Simple:Press Forum’s page slug.

The WordPress Rewrite Rules Need Flushing

If you are using permalinks on your WordPress site then these are handled by what WP calls ‘rewrite rules’. Simple:Press Forum adds to these rules the necessary directions for it to display correctly. Sometimes, during the installation, these rules do not get added. The following simple procedure will ensure that the rules are flushed and rebuilt to include those the forum requires:

  • Navigate to the WordPress Admin ☛ Settings ☛ Permalinks panel.
  • Change your permalink setting to a different one (NOT default).
  • Click on the Update Permalinks button.
  • Now change the permalink setting back to your preferred choice.
  • Click on the Update Permalinks button once again.
  • Navigate to Forum ☛ WP Integration ☛ Page and Permalink and click on on Update Forum Permalink.

This should flush the rewrite rules and rebuilt them.


Article written by steve on January 23, 2010 and last modified by Yellow Swordfish on March 11, 2010