Oh, WordPress, is there any way in which people can’t break you? I love you dearly, but sometimes, you’re a real pain in the ass.
Without a doubt, the most common reason why your WordPress installation suddenly stopped working is…you tried to change the home page. Yes, that’s it. Although, you probably already knew that, since you’re reading this. Here’s what [probably] happened, here’s what should have happened, and here’s how you fix it.
You [probably] decided you wanted your blog to show up at some nifty, pretty URL. The straight-up URL wasn’t cutting it. You wanted /home or /start or /owmystomachlining.
- You created a new Page – Ow My Stomach Lining
- You went to the new page – http://myblog.com/owmystomachlining/ – and saw it working. w00t!
- You went to Settings -> General and changed WordPress address (URL) to that URL up there. Booo.
Here’s what you should have done. Giving WordPress Its Own Directory. I will not reiterate what’s written, I will only say go there, read that and do it.
The problem you now have is that the WordPress Address is supposed to be reflective of the actual location of the files. Now when WP starts up, it’s looking for something where it doesn’t exist. Woops.
Here’s how you fix it.
- Either you (or someone capable, should you not be) must open phpMyAdmin.
- Have them to go the wp_options table.
- Make sure the keys ‘home’ and ‘siteurl’ match the actual location of the WP files (usually, your URL)
- Save, test, repeat if necessary.
Part 2 of ??? will come when I find more common ways of breaking WordPress.
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