Resolving Broken WordPress Site After Modifying Permalink Settings

Experiencing WordPress site glitches post-permalink tweaks can be maddening. Those cryptic 404 and 403 errors can leave us perplexed but fret not. In this quick guide I’ll give you three possible solutions that you can test for your site:

  1. Verify that your Apache server has the option AllowOveride set to All
  2. Check that the option mod_rewrite is activated
  3. Review your server’s error log file looking for the following:

    [rewrite:error] (...)[rewrite:error] (...) FollowSymLinks and SymLinksIfOwnerMatch are both off, so the RewriteRule directive is also forbidden (...) and SymLinksIfOwnerMatch are both off, so the RewriteRule directive is also forbidden (...)

    If that’s the case you will have to activate FollowSymLinks and SymLinksIfOwnerMatch in your .htaccess file by adding the following at the beginning:

    Options +FollowSymLinks
    Options +SymLinksifOwnerMatch
    # 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