WordPress is giving me 404 page not found for all pages except the homepage

Question

.htaccess is a hidden file, so you must set all files as visible in your ftp.

I suggest you return your permalink structure to default ( ?p=ID ) so you ensure that .htaccess is the problem.

After that, you could simply set "month and name" structure again, and see if it works.

PS: Have you upgraded to 3.1? I've seen some people with plugin issues in this case.

Basically the .htaccess file should exists and the httpd.conf should be correct.

In my case, I changed the file /etc/apache2/apache2.conf in section:

<Directory "/var/www/html">

Line changed is:

AllowOverride None

to

AllowOverride All

And restart the web server with

systemctl restart apache2

Fixing that problem is very simple if you was using permalinks other than the default such as Day and name, Month and name, Numeric, Post name or Custom Structure, you only need to

Login to your admin area: Settings > Permalinks which should be : http://yoursite.com/wp-admin/options-permalink.php

Choose Default permalink setting, then save changes

Then you can return it again to your other previous permalink choice or keep it as default as yo wish

Note that this problem can happen when you move your site from a domain or location to another one.

If the default behavior (example.com/?p=42) is working, you should:

• Change to your preferred permalink style: Admin: Settings > Permalinks, and click Save. Sometime it fixes the issue. If it didn't:
• Verify that the file /path/to/wordpress/.htaccess has been changed and now includes the line RewriteEngine On. If it doesn't include the line, it's a Wordpress permissions issue.

• Verify that the 'rewrite' module is loaded: create a PHP file with

  <?php
    phpinfo()
  ?>
  

  in it, open it in the browser and search for mod_rewrite. It should be in the 'Loaded Modules' section. If it's not, enable it - Look at your apache default index.html file for details - in Ubuntu, you do it with the helper a2enmod.

• Verify that apache server is looking at the .htaccess file. open httpd.conf - or it's Ubuntu's alternative, /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. In it, You should have something like

  <Directory /path/to/wordpress>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
  </Directory>
  

• After making these changes, don't forget to restart your apache server. sudo service apache2 restart

IF all this dont work, your .htaccess is correct, and permalinks trick didnt work, you may have not enabled your apache2 rewite mod.

I ran this and my issue was solved:

 sudo a2enmod rewrite