7 replies to this topic

[SEOigloo]

We are having a very strange problem with a WP blog, reminiscent of Cinderella's coach turning into a pumpkin at midnight.

We are building a blog-based website.

We have a post (yes, a post) on the site acting as a permanent page. We have to do this instead of having pages act as pages because of how we had to set up the homepage as a static page that contains a section that shows latest blog posts coming up in a column. So, because we've done this this way, we can't write the permanent pages as WP pages or the blog posts would appear on those pages, just like they do on the homepage.

The post we have written, which is giving us a problem, we have set as 'pending review' in the dashboard because we don't want it to appear with the rest of the regular blog posts.

Here is the Cinderella part. When we visit the URL, we see it. The next day, we get up and it's gone, returning us a 404 error. This has now happened twice.

We've never seen this happen before.

We went back in an set the post to unpublished instead of pending review. Would this make it stop disappearing? Can the community figure out what we've done wrong.

Seems like every time we build another wordpress blog, we learn 3 or 4 new things.

I'd so appreciate any thoughts on what could be going on. Thanks!
Miriam

[iamlost]

Miriam: I have no experience with WP. That said are you aware of the following:

For WordPress 2.1+

The options in the Settings Reading SubPanel are few in number, but still important. You can decide if you want posts, or a "static" Page, displayed as your blog's front (main) page. You can also adjust how many posts are displayed on that main page. In addition, you can adjust syndication feed features to determine how the information from your site is sent to a reader's web browser or other applications.

http://codex.wordpre...eading_SubPanel

For Wordpress prior to 2.1:
Creating a Static Front Page

As to the curious disappearance - any mice, bits of pumpkin, or perhaps a glass slipper...?

[DonnaFontenot]

Sounds like a similar problem I've been having for quite a while on one blog, in which any "new" pages return 404's. Old pages work fine. New and old posts work fine. But new pages get 404'd. It's obviously "something" to do with the 301 redirection aspect of the pretty permalinks structure, but try as I might, I have not been able to find a solution for it. Still...the first place I would recommend you look is your .htaccess file. See if it holds any clues as to why that post might be 404'ing. Other suggestions: Change your permalinks structure to something else for just a moment, and then change it back. See if that resets things and fixes it. Also, try changing the post's slug (permalink url) to something else to see if that kick-starts it or not. None of those things worked for me, but maybe they'll work for you. Good luck.

[kulpreet_singh]

Hi Miriam,

Are you sure that you're logging out of the site and then viewing the post? Perhaps it's always 404 but it shows the post to you because, in that browsing session, you're logged in as admin?

Just a guess

thanks

-k.s.

[Ruud]

we can't write the permanent pages as WP pages or the blog posts would appear on those pages, just like they do on the homepage.

Yes you can.

Use conditional tags to set rules for when something gets displayed or done and when not.

<?php if ( is_home() ) : ?>
whatever
<?php endif; ?>

This would only appear on the home page

http://codex.wordpre...onditional_Tags

[yannis]

Never seen this before but could it be that is date based?

We have a post (yes, a post) on the site acting as a permanent page.

Wordpress allows you, using conditionals to display whatever you wish on the front page or for that matter any archive page. Actually conditionals are simply php code snippets.

What is this page suppose to do? Why are you using a post and not a page?


Yannis

Edited by yannis, 29 April 2008 - 10:34 PM.

[SEOigloo]

Thank you for all of the suggestions, everyone. I really, really appreciate the ideas.

We are going to try to test all of them tonight before bedtime.

Yannis - to answer your question.

The homepage is a static page set in the backend of WP as a static page. We had to modify the page.php template file to set up the home page as we wanted it with some customizable information at the top and then all of the blog posts coming up underneath this section.

What my husband thought is that if we then made all of the other pages on the site 'pages' instead of 'posts' they would follow the page.php template we modified, and we don't want that.

The disappearing/problem page of the site we have published, therefor, as a 'post' that we have set as either 'unpublished' or 'pending review'. We don't want it to be set as 'published' because we thought this would make it appear with the rest of the blog posts on the homepage (though from what you and Ruud are saying, we're wrong about this). In any case, it is disappearing whether we have set it as pending or unpublished, so that is the problem.

Gosh, I'm sorry if I'm not explaining this well. It's confusing.

We will go investigate all of this and I shall return to update on our progress. A sticky situation :panic:

Thank you, all!
Miriam

Edited by SEOigloo, 30 April 2008 - 02:41 AM.

[yannis]

What my husband thought is that if we then made all of the other pages on the site 'pages' instead of 'posts' they would follow the page.php template we modified, and we don't want that.

If you go in the admin panel, if you writing a page you can use any template you wish. It is one of the fields on the right. In the template file ie, say, you need a template named artists.php you will need to tell wordpress is a template file by including a header on top.


<?php
/*
Template Name: artists
*/
?>


Yannis