How to Fix HTTP 404 Error Page Not Found in WordPress Website
In this post, we’ll look at the 404 Page Not Found Error and look at what could be causing it, as well as some tips and tricks to help you diagnose and fix your programme if it’s having problems.
The 404-status code is the most popular HTTP status code. The response code indicates that, even though a user was able to navigate to a website’s server, the page could not be found. This error code is then shown by the browser. Content of the web page may not display, which is bad news for your website and its users.
404 page not found errors may occur unexpectedly or as a result of certain changes or modifications made to the WordPress site. When you update the theme, change in the permalink, rewriting the rules in the .htaccess file, or a missing file this error occurs. Fixing this problem is quite straightforward and requires no expert skills.
HTTP 404 Error affect your Ranking and Traffic
Indeed, a HTTP error 404 page not found will dramatically decrease traffic to your website. Apart from the negative impression of your website, it has a huge impact on search engine rankings, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. As a result, you must identify and fix these mistakes on your website as soon as possible.
If a domain has a high number of HTTP 404 errors, search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing will penalize it and give the domain a bad rating. When crawlers discover so many requests are being greeted with 404 errors, it seems the site isn’t well managed. Dead links have a significant influence on a site’s score, as have too many HTTP 404 error pages. Sometimes a user visits your website and then quickly exits, Google assumes that your result does not correspond to the user’s purpose, As a result, Google can reduce its location in the SERPs or even avoid indexing it. This could result in a significant drop in the number of visitors to the website.
Some of the causes of WordPress HTTP 404 error Page Not Found
- Misspelled URL – This error is simple as this error is not coming directly from your website, when you or someone else use an extra letter or symbol when typing the URL it is not redirected properly to the website and this error occurs.
- Theme update – Sometimes this HTTP 404 error occurs when you update your WordPress theme or activate a new theme.
- Moved or deleted page – Sometimes, the page may have been moved or removed by the Administrator, in which case the error appears.
- Caching problems – Even if your site is working fine for everybody else, your browser can cache the page you’re trying to visit when it can’t be found, so you’ll keep getting the error 404 page not found.
- Change of permalink – Because of permalink structure changes, this HTTP 404 error occur, due to the permalink issue Google would not be able to crawl any of the pages on the website.
- (DNS) Domain Name Server – Sometimes your domain name is not propagated properly with the DNS you are using and then try to ping the website it shows an HTTP 404 error.
- Rewriting .htaccess – If recently you made any changes to the .htaccess file this error occurs.
- Plugin compatibility issues –In some cases, due to plugin compatibility with WordPress theme, this may result in an HTTP 404 error page not found.
How to Fix WordPress HTTP 404 Error Page Not Found
It is important to fix errors as soon as possible in order to save visitors from encountering them. In certain cases, the solution to the initial error is quickly discovered, and the visitor is quickly led to the web page they were searching for. So, in this segment, we are going to explain you few things and try to assist you to fix the WordPress HTTP 404 error page not found.
Steps to follow: –
Check URL to fix the 404 error page not found:
It might be that there was a mistake whether you manually typed the URL address or directed via a link. You should check the supplied website path for that reason. You may have mistyped something, or the person entering the URL. Aside from spelling errors, forward slashes might have been omitted or misplaced. However, keep in mind that this can only be done with ‘clean’ URLs, which include illegible words rather than confusing abbreviations, letters, numbers, and symbols.
Delete the cache and cookies in your browser to fix the 404 error:
If you can visit the website from another device but the HTTP 404 error page not found only appears on one machine, the issue might be with your browser. As a result, you should clear your browser cache as well as all cookies associated with this site, which should allow you to view the page.
Reload or Refresh the page to fix 404 error:
It is possible that the HTTP error 404 arose because the website did not load correctly. This can be quickly tested by clicking “Refresh” or by using the F5 button in your browser.
The page should be redirected to fix 404 error :
The simplest and most straightforward approach to resolve or fix an HTTP 404 error code (page not found) is to redirect the user to a different page. A 301 redirect can be used to accomplish this goal. You might be wondering what 301 is. This is a redirected reaction code that indicates to a browser that the content is moved to a different URL.
Fix the link for 404 error:
It is human to make mistakes and easy to fix, and mistakes do occur. It’s rather usual for people to type a URL incorrectly. If this is the case with your HTTP 404 error code, make sure you correct the URL.
Restore pages that have been erased and fix your page not found 404 error:
In certain circumstances, visitors will come to your site in search of a page that you have removed. People will continue to seek a page even if you remove it from your site. People may also arrive at the page via external connections. You can always restore a deleted page to resolve this. Unless there’s a compelling commercial purpose to preserve that page. If not, be sure to redirect them to sites with similar information when you wish to remove some pages from your site, this way you can fix them.
Disable Your Plugin and Theme of WordPress to Fix Page not Found Error:
As we said previously, your WordPress URL structure might occasionally affect your plugins and themes according to their configuration. When the WordPress 404 page not found problem continues, deactivating your themes and plug-ins is your best chance when you have attempted one or both of these approaches to fix the issue.
This may be done in two ways, whether or not you’ve got access to your dashboard. If you have access, click on the All Plugins page and follow this method with each plugin to fix the issue.
- Underneath the plugin name, click the Deactivate button.
- To test whether the HTTP 404 issue remains or has been fixed, check your website.
- Remove the plugin you disabled if the issue is still there.
- Drag and repeat the operation onto the next plugin in the list.
Your aim is to remove every plugin one by one as a suspect. You might disable them all at once, however, in most situations, a single plugin is the source of your issues. You have three alternatives if you disable one of your plugins that address the problem. You can check whether an update is available, temporarily deactivate your plugin until an update has been released, or deactivate it and choose an alternative.
If none of your plugins are to blame, you’ll want to double-check that your active theme isn’t the source of the 404 problems. Because you only have to verify one theme, this approach is a lot faster. Go to the Themes tab and switch to anything besides your active subject:
Check to see whether the WordPress 404 error has disappeared. If so, that means it has been fixed, you have to decide again whether to search for an update or to discover a new theme. Switching WordPress themes can be some trouble, but, if your present theme leads to issues, it is worth changing over the long term.
Reset the Permalinks in WordPress:
An issue with the way that WordPress produces your permalinks is a typical reason for the WordPress 404 error. As you know, WordPress gives you various choices for styling the links in your posts and pages. You can, for example, arrange the platform to utilize simple numeric links or to make the title of each post the URL:
In any event, if you see a 404 page not found error in a WordPress article, the first thing you will want to do is reset your permalinks. You have two options for doing so: using your dashboard or via FTP/cPanel.
You can start by heading to your Settings > Permalink tab if you can get into your dashboard. You will see the structure currently in use on your WordPress website. To reset WordPress’ permalink settings, and click on the “Save” button below the page, you will need to update it temporarily.
The page will be refreshed. Then you may return to your old permalinks type and save your modifications again. That’s all it takes to restructure your WordPress permalinks.
Now go ahead and visit your website as you normally would. Examine the pages that previously produced WordPress 404 errors to check if they continue to do so. If the error is gone, means it is fixed, it’s because of the permalink.
Restore Your WordPress .htaccess File:
When you make modifications to the structure of your WordPress permalinks, they are stored in a file called .htaccess. This file determines how WordPress communicates with its server as well as how it creates URLs for your pages.
If you can’t access your dashboard because of the WordPress posts 404 issues, you’ll need to manually edit .htaccess to reset your permalinks. To begin, log in to your website using FTP or cPanel and browse to the WordPress root folder. This is the location of your WordPress installation, which is usually in a folder called public HTML or WWW.
Right-click on the htaccess file in the HTML or WWW and pick the View/Edit option. Downloading and opening a file using your local Default Text Editor is a copy of your machine. Now you may make any modifications that you desire.
Don’t worry if you don’t comprehend anything in this file. You shouldn’t make any modifications until you’re certain about them. You may, however, use the normal WordPress .htaccess code, which looks like this:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ – [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
Refresh your site and view posts and pages after altering and uploading the htaccess file to check whether this resolves your WordPress error 404 issues. If the 404 error is gone, that’s fantastic news, thanks to htaccess.
How to track your website HTTP 404 error page not found
It’s critical for website owners to avoid HTTP 404 pages. This applies both to 404 internal web error pages, and to 404 external website errors. You may discover several free programs that assist you in simply discover broken links. There are six of the greatest and most famous:
Google Search Console –
If you have a Gmail account, register your website in the Google search console (formerly Webmaster tool). Any HTTP 404 page not found problems discovered by the Google crawler are presented in the web tool, where they may be marked as fixed. Additional features include the ability to locate mistakes in robots.txt files and the ability to use crawling data to determine how frequently your site has been visited by Google crawlers. So by using the Google search console you can fix the 404 page not found error.
Google Analytics –
To investigate HTTP 404 error, page not found, register with Google Analytics which is the best tool of Google to track the error, and also you can set up custom reports and fix them.
Dead Link Checker –
The Dead Link Checker is one of the easiest and fastest tools for locating both internally and externally connected 404 pages. Simply input the URL of the site you wish to analyze into the Dead link checker, and the examination will begin. You may check a single web page or the entire site from here. The program displays all of the error pages that have been monitored, along with their status codes and URLs, by investigating the issue you can fix the error 404 page not found.
W3C Link Checker –
Because this online tool from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is so comprehensive when it comes to evaluating individual website pages, the process of verifying links takes longer than it does with other websites. The W3C Link Checker is similar to the Dead Link Checker in that you enter the URL and the programme does the rest, the best way to fix it.
Ahrefs (Third-Party Audit Tool)
A Tool such as Ahrefs can monitor your WordPress site’s HTTP 404 error found effectively.
WordPress Plugin
If you want a WP plugin, you may use the Redirection plugin to track HTTP 404 failures on your WordPress dashboard.
To know more about WordPress Installation go through our another article
Automated WordPress installation
Conclusion:
Unfortunately, your website has HTTP 404 errors, whether or not you like it. To avoid your website’s traffic from being severely impacted by HTTP 404 problems, you must respond quickly and professionally. The bigger your WordPress site becomes, the more you’ll notice. We propose putting together a strong procedure for monitoring and correcting these sorts of issues. 404 page not found errors are never good for visitors or your business, and Google hates them as well, so fix this as soon as possible.
Does HTTP Error 404 Not Found Message have any other advice or inquiries or How does it influence your WordPress site? In the comments below, let us know.
