Title: 404 Problem
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# 404 Problem

 *  [poe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/poe/)
 * (@poe)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/)
 * I have WordPress installed and it runs just fine. My problem is that if I have
   permalinks customized, my 404 page (for pages outside WP) doesn’t work. It just
   goes to a blank page with blank source code. I assume this problem has something
   to do with the .htaccess file. I’ve installed in the root directory. Any ideas?

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

 *  [ivovic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ivovic/)
 * (@ivovic)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767845)
 * permalinks customised in any particular way? or even one of the presets makes
   this happen?
 * consider letting wordpress create it’s own htaccess file, which you can modify
   later, once everything works, if you need to.
 *  Thread Starter [poe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/poe/)
 * (@poe)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767847)
 * Yup I did let WordPress create it’s own htaccess. Permalinks are customized like
   this:
 * /%year%%monthnum%%day%/%postname%/
 * If I don’t have them customzied (use default) the 404 works just fine but if 
   I use the above it goes to a blank page as I described instead of my 404 page
   when an invalid url is accessed.
 *  [ivovic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ivovic/)
 * (@ivovic)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767848)
 * I’m surprised that works when a *valid* URL is selected. Without any delimiters
   between the year-month-day, I’m surprised wordpress can work out what the hell
   it’s supposed to be doing.
 * would you consider linking to your site, poe, so we can see this behaviour for
   ourselves?
 * I’m mainly curious to try removing the postname from a valid link and seeing 
   what happens.
 * if you don’t want to use delimiters, like not even dots, then why use dates at
   all? set your permalink to something like /articles/%postname%
 *  Thread Starter [poe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/poe/)
 * (@poe)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767849)
 * Ah. The problem was that I wasn’t thinking. While I’m getting my new site ready
   I don’t have the index.php uploaded to the root directory (have a blank page 
   instead) which wasn’t allowing the WP 404 to redirect to the main 404 for files
   outside Worpress (one of which I was working on). See, I’m using
 * `<?php require('wp-blog-header.php'); ?>`
 * to incorporate my whole site into my WP theme. If that makes any sense. It works
   now anyway! Thanks for answering Ivonic 🙂
 *  [ivovic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ivovic/)
 * (@ivovic)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767850)
 * could have told you that if you’d linked your site, pee 😉
 * I’m still quite surprised that permalink structure works, that’s actually pretty
   cool for those concerned that date-based permalinks create deep directories.
 *  Thread Starter [poe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/poe/)
 * (@poe)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767851)
 * Actually, I’ve used that customization for quit some time (on other blogs) and
   it works just fine. Thanks though, as I said above I figured out the problem 
   was me, heh 😉
 *  Thread Starter [poe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/poe/)
 * (@poe)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767852)
 * I would have linked to my site but there’s absolutely nothing there for the time
   being until I’m done with the rest of the site. The blog is all ready to go but
   with no posts so it wouldn’t have done any good to post the URL 🙂
 * I got that permalink structure from here…
 * [http://jayesel.net/](http://jayesel.net/)
 * I just like the way it looks. I didn’t think it would work either but it does
   for her and it alaways has for me too.
 *  [ivovic](https://wordpress.org/support/users/ivovic/)
 * (@ivovic)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767853)
 * thats actually really awesome – and degrades properly too with digits removed…
   me rikey!
 * that makes me want to change my permastinks… but I’m not really looking forward
   to the many 301 redirects required to make it happen :/
 *  Thread Starter [poe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/poe/)
 * (@poe)
 * [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767854)
 * Indeed. Scaaaaawy the changing of the permakinks! :p

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

The topic ‘404 Problem’ is closed to new replies.

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 9 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [poe](https://wordpress.org/support/users/poe/)
 * Last activity: [18 years ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/404-problem-1/#post-767854)
 * Status: not resolved

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