Static HTML file in WordPress cause of major issues!

Static HTML file in WordPress cause of major issues!

Right I've solved this major pain in the ass!

A static HTML file in the root of my WordPress site was the cause of major issues!

I have just managed to fix a problem in Wordpress on one of my sites I run that has been doing my swede in for over a week now. You can see the thread I wrote (that no-one replied to) here > wordpress.org

Basically I use WP Super Cache for my caching and Cloudflare and everything worked fine until I upgraded to the latest verson of WordPress.

However since the 20th December 7am, my homepage was "fixed" like stone. The comments in the footer said WP Super Cache had created it but I couldn't clear it.

I disabled all plugins. I swapped caching plugins. I tried all the usual tricks of adding querystrings ?r=1212 to make the page unique, using the secret "no cache" key, adding pragma no-cache headers to the header file, ticking "no cache" on every type of file. 

Turning caching OFF, clearing all my .htaccess rules and much more as you will see if you read the post on WordPress.

However today I fixed it. I searched the root of my site and found that there was a page in the root of my site called index.htm.

I presume like IIS you set extensions and filenames that run in order of precendence so that index.htm runs before index.php and so on. This meant the htm static file always ran and the index.php file which all WordPress code has to pass through was never being called!

I viewed the source of this HTML file and it was exactly the same source as that of the homepage if I viewed it with the WP Super Cache comments and all the rest of it. The build date was exactly the same as the comments in the site. Nightmare!

I deleted this page and now the site is working again!

Why this page was cached as static HTML and put in the root of my site I have no idea.

The index.php file is the one all the WP code throws everything through with their massive overkill of PHP instead of adding .htaccess rules into the file to handle /tags/, /category/, /post/date/blah etc. If you actually look at the code that has to run on every page load just to work out what kind of rewritten URL it is - then you will CRY! 

Why not just take the users settings for permalinks and make .htaccess rules for each major branch.

Anyway I digress it seems to work for now and if anyone else has the same problem check for an index.htm file in their root and delete it. Whether WP Super Cache put it there or not I don't know but it buggered me up for 10 days sp check first!

Problem with WAMP Server on localhost with .htaccess file

Problem with WAMP Server on localhost with .htaccess file

If you have read my article Troubleshooting WAMP server on Windows 7 installations you will know that I run both IIS and WAMP on the same Windows computer side by side.

I let IIS run on the normal 127.0.0.1 (Localhost IP loopback address) and I change the PHP.ini file to let Apache run on 127.0.0.1:8888 (same IP but a different port no).

This enables me to run and test PHP files on the same PC without having to toggle IIS on/off before each run of a PHP file

However I also use my WAMP folder C:/www/wamp/test.php as a place to quickly test PHP files or to download files from my Wordpress or PHP sites to debug and test various parts quickly on my local PC with full debugging so I don't effect the live site.

However one of things you may have run into is when WAMP is running but you are getting an error page when you go to to localhost:8888 and just get an error page like this:

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, admin@localhost and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused theerror.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

So you have no idea what the problem is. IIS is off, you haven't changed PHP.ini config and nothing seems wrong.

Debugging

First thing to do is check your local Apache error log file e.g at C:/wamp/logs/apache_error.log to see if anything stands out.

It might show nothing or it might show something related to the last time you ran the page like this.

[Mon Dec 30 15:41:24 2013] [alert] [client 127.0.0.1] C:/wamp/www/.htaccess: Invalid command 'ExpiresActive', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

Solution

Now the problem is basic stupidity. I was testing and modifying a sites .htaccess file by downloading it from the site by FTP to the wamp/www folder so I could analyse it and play about with it.

However I had forgotten to change the name of the file back from .htaccess to $.htaccess or delete it altogether. Therefore when WAMP loads with the www folder being the home directory it will automatically load in any .htaccess file and rules it finds.

If the file is full of irrelevant, invalid or old commands this means that the WAMP system on your Windows PC cannot compute and analyse them all and therefore you get the Internal Server Error message.

Just delete or rename your .htaccess file to $.htaccess or BACKUP_htaccess (as Windows won't actually let you rename a file starting with a period e.g .htacess_backup giving the "You must type a filename" error message as it sees the period at the part before the file extension and believes no name exists for the file.

However after renaming or removing the file then this problem should be resolved.

It's happened a few times to me now so I thought I would write it down in case I forgot next time DOH!

To read more about setting up WAMP Server alongside IIS on a Windows machine read my article on it at: Trouble Shotting WAMP Server on Windows 7 Machines.