I was trying to publish a post the other day and every time I hit save or publish, I'd get a 404 error. Well, after a long search, I finally figured out what was wrong on my own.
Mother of God I just spent hours trying to figure out why I couldn’t publish a post I was writing…I kept getting a 404 error every time I tried to save or publish the post. So, I searched all over the place for an answer but to no avail. I poured through my server logs to find traces of a hacker, but again, no luck. Finally, I realized what it was…
While writing another post about the solution to another error in Wordpress, I referenced the htaccess file, but with a period in front. Apparently mod_security has some sort of problem with that and wouldn’t budget, so I had to leave out the period.
If you absolutely must include “htaccess,” but starting with a period, in your post, I think they solved the problem by turning off mod_security here, although I don’t think that’s the smartest thing you can do.
This issue has to do with Mod Security on your server.
I spent 40 mins troubleshooting this with my host.
You need to whitelist certain files in your wp-admin area. Or, if you can, whitelist all of the files in wp-admin.
DO NOT use the mod_sec workarounds that seem to be posted several places on the web.
Thanks for the heads up on that jc!
Hi, thanks for the advice on this issue. I’m having the 404 problem on publishing. Very bizzare, if I remove one letter from a word it saves, if I add it back it wont!!!!
Any information on how to ‘whitelist’ the wp-admin files?
I’m on a VPS so I can get into the server fairly deep but I’m a newbie!
Thanks.
Brian