WordPress MU

So I'm playing around with MU for grins, and I noticed something.

I went through Site Admin, then clicked on edit for the main blog to change its settings.

I changed the permalink structure from the default to /%category%/%postname%/ playing around. I didn't think anything of it, as I use this all the time with standard WP installs.

I go back and browse around a bit, and for any category or post permalink it was giving me a 404.

Odd, I thought. So I went in and looked at it, this time through the normal Options -> Permalinks for the main blog, and it looked just fine. So I continued looking around, making sure I didn't induce a typo somewhere or something. (Pages were working fine, for the record.)

Nope, nothing. Everything else was OK, I hadn't added any additional test posts after the initial permalink structure, so I kept looking. Even went back through my httpd.conf, etc.

At this time, it wouldn't even recognize date based permalinks either, which WP usually will, even it they're not set like that (archives, etc).

Finally, I did the usual thing for when permalinks tend to get hosed on WP.
Options -> Permalinks -> Update

I switched it to the default, and it worked.
I switched it back to what it was, and it worked.
I even switched it to /%postname%.html (even used .php), and it was fine.

So, I'm wondering (I know, after the long TMI above), if anyone else has noticed or had problems with updating permalinks through Site Admin, vice Options->Permalinks?

For the record:
CentOS 4.3
Apache 1.3.36
PHP 4.4.3
MySQL 4.1.x (.35, or whatever it is)

I'm going to see if I can reproduce it again, as I go through testing. It wasn't a typo, because I cut the original, and pasted it back in when I changed it back.

I too have this issue, but unlike you I haven't gotten it to work again. I toasted the .htaccess file for another reason and didn't think anything of it. I figured when I went into the admin panel it'd let me tweak my settings and WP would write the .htaccess instructions to the file. No such luck.

WPMU's Options > Permalinks page proudly and web 2.0-ly tells me that my "Permalink structure updated." Groovy. But nothing in the file changes and therefore my site is hosed.

I've had great success with Wordpress and and trying to transition to WPMU for a county library system. Any help would be appreciated.

"I toasted the .htaccess file for another reason and didn't think anything of it."

That's probably why your site is hosed then. MU relies heavily on the htaccess. There should be a htaccess.dist file in the index. Copy that in your htaccess (change the BASE to /) and you should be okay. Then you can work on the permalinks thing.

andrea_r: thanks for the tips and the time. As I said, I'm pretty used to the forgiving nature of the standalone version of wordpress. To nuke the .htaccess file there is no big deal.

I did as you indicated (I had tried that before but with changing BASE to /) and I still get no change to the .htaccess file when I make edits in the Options > Permalinks. For reference, I changed from 'Date and name based' to 'Numeric'. My file (with 777 permissions) is as follows:


RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule . - [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(wp-.*) $2 [L]
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?(.*\.php)$ $2 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]


Despite the fact that .htaccess files is not touched by the process, the admin panel still indicates all went well. In the standalone version of WP, I at least get error messages up the yang when it fails to modify.

Again, any insights would be appreciated.

BTW - I know details are the devil here, so if there's information you need that I haven't provided, please let me know.

OK, by creating a whole new fresh install and stealing some details from the clean .htaccess file, I was able to get the old site back up and running.

However, this still seems like odd behavior. Am I expecting too much for WPMU to act like the standalone in regards to the creation of the .htaccess? Probably, yes.

For those who like details, and would like to know where I went wrong, it's pretty simple: my install was in a subdirectory of root. When I overwrote the installed .htaccess file with the default from htaccess.dist, I neglected to change BASE/ to /sub-directory-name (I had it simply as /).

Live and learn.

It should change permalinks fine like the stand-alone, but for me the tip-off to your troubles is having it in a subdirectory. For some reason, on some servers, in some cases, MU just doesn't like being there.