Access to anything other than homepage error 404

[stencorp69]

Hi All,

I need a little help our forum http://www.pilbarapythons.com/trueblue/index.php [nofollow] has stopped working. We can access the simple portal home screen/page but are unable to access the forum or any other part of the SMF.

Errors
Not Found

Referring URL http://www.pilbarapythons.com/trueblue/index.php [nofollow]

Your IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx [nofollow]

Requested URL /trueblue/admin/

Redirect Status Code 404
Go Back

I haven't logged on in weeks and there have been no changes since then and  from the home page I can see that people have been using it up until May 31. I've checked the database and that looks good, run the repair setting.php and restored root, sources and Themes directories from backups but that doesn't resolve the issue. When I perform a webupgrade.php it completely kills the forum.

Any tips where or what I should be looking at?

thanks

[kat]

Pure hunch, this...

Have a look at .htaccess, in the forum's root. Try renaming it, to see if you can get in.

[stencorp69]

thanks for your quick response I did look at that originally and both deleted and created a blank file but the result is the same

Not Found

Referring URL http://www.pilbarapythons.com/trueblue/index.php [nofollow]

Your IP

Requested URL /trueblue/forum/?PHPSESSID=4fd0a1e59473b2308cf46f78b1c24adf

Redirect Status Code 404

Go Back

thanks

[kat]

Hmmm... Have a look at index.php, in the root.

The first line should be:

<?php

Just that and absolutely nothing else.

[stencorp69]

yep it's <?php

and the forum is version 2.0.2

[kat]

Here's what seems odd, to me...

The link to this topic is:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=505056.msg3554768#msg3554768

Links to your topics are like these:

http://www.pilbarapythons.com/trueblue/reptile-discussions/my-first-herping-trip/msg35786/?topicseen#new

http://www.pilbarapythons.com/trueblue/new-members-introductions/banana-hammock!/msg35768/?topicseen#new

Totally weird.

What mods do you have?

Anything that rewrites URLs, like PrettyURLs, or something? (Those things can be a real PITA)

Have you tried this?

http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Repair_settings.php

[stencorp69]

yes it has prettyurl - I'm happy to remove it but I can't get into the admin section.

yes I have run the repair settings.php

[stencorp69]

Yep it was the pretty URLs

To remove the pretty URLs  I followed the fix for Every link causes 404 Not Found errors at http://code.google.com/p/prettyurls/wiki/TroubleShooting [nofollow]

Thanks for the help it is really appreciated

[kat]

How long ago did you install it? Was it the last mod you installed?

If so, you might want to read this:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=400356.0

[stencorp69]

The prettyURL mod would have been installed November 2012. The last backup I had was from February this year when I installed another mod. PrettyURLs hadn't caused any issues that were manifested in using the site and the only issue I experienced with the forum since Feb was that I had to log into the admin section twice to gain access to site configuration. Now that prettyURLs is uninstalled this no longer happens. I suspect the hosting service has changed something in the backend which prevented the prettyurls from resolving but other than that assumption I have no idea what changed.

Thanks again for your help

[MrPhil]

Did your host modify or overwrite your .htaccess file(s)? Might they have reconfigured their server to now disallow certain operations, or require a different format in .htaccess? (e.g., now require explicit <If...> on everything) If you want to pursue this matter, that might be something to ask them. Offhand, I can't think of anything in a PHP or MySQL upgrade that would have broken SMF 2.0 like that, but anything's possible.