WordPress Help for Global Page Not Found
There are several common reasons for links on a website to break. Regardless of the reason, a broken link becomes apparent when the Web browser requests a page that is no longer available at that address. This results in a Web server 404 error, the number assigned to the "Page Not Found" error. WordPress will use a standard error page when this occurs, but it is best to resolve broken links.
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404 Page
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Most WordPress themes will include a customized error page that will display when an incoming link request causes a Page Not Found error. This is called a 404 page, after the numerical name of the error. WordPress will use the theme's 404 page if one is provided. Otherwise it may default to showing the WordPress standard 404 page, or the Web server running WordPress may provide its own. You can add a 404 page to any theme by creating a file named "404.php" in the wp-content folder for that theme.
WordPress Permalinks
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WordPress will assign a link to every post on your site, called a permalink. Your blogs will constantly change as you add new posts, so it is never a good idea to use a link to a site page number, as every post on those pages will eventually scroll off to later pages. The permalink will always direct the browser to a single page displaying a post and its comments.
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Causes for Link Breakage
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Links may break for various reasons, most commonly stemming from a theme modification, WordPress upgrade or other kind of data migration into WordPress. There are several different kinds of permalinks to choose from in the WordPress Dashboard for your blog; changing from one kind to another may cause previously made permalinks to break. The WordPress format "http://www.domain.com/?p=123" will work regardless of which permalink structure you have chosen; however, since the post number is not displayed on the site, this is not a descriptive URL.
Resolving Link Errors
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Your Web server logs will show incoming requests that result in a 404 error, and most log reporting software will give you a report displaying all 404 errors that have occurred during the reporting period. If you control the Web pages where these links were located, called the "referrer" page, you should edit these links to reflect the current permalink structure. Alternately, your Web server has the capability to intercept incoming URLs and redirect them to new and working locations; for example, the Apache method of doing this is in the configuration file of the mod_rewrite module. However, if every page on your site cannot be found, check to ensure that your WordPress installation is in the root folder of your Web server, usually named "www;" to avoid a folder nesting error causing all links to break.
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