I’m having the same problem. Also, services like the W3C validators return my forum pages at 404s when I try validating them.
The dotq.org site is REALLY slow, like the server is overloaded or the pipe to it is overloaded or something. It loaded for me in Firefox, once, but in IE it timed out after 60 seconds or something.
When I did it with the command line, it took almost 58 seconds, and that’s browser independent. I think the problem is that the server is slow, or the software running the site is slow, one or the other.
u35878210:~ > time curl -I dotq.org
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:59:37 GMT
Server: Apache
real 0m57.898s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.000s
noyz319: need a URL to test your site.
Here’s the URL, and i’ve set it back to the default theme as well: http://clutchmagonline.com/forums
Its loading once in a while, but clicking around here and there you definitely still get the 404 errors.
I had a problem with WordPress in IE7, and I installed the latest version of IE7 which cured the problem. There has been several beta versions of IE7, and it could just be that you are running an old version. Worth a check….
Like dreamsoft, I also just tried using validator.w3.org on our forum and it came up as 404. Its very confusing why only the validators and IE have this problem and no other browsers do.
kernow, i don’t think that is it, since our actual wordpress site runs just fine as do other wordpress sites in IE7, its just the bbpress forum. And i’ve tried this on a couple of computers running IE7, one with a build from yesterday and one with a slightly older build.
noyz319: the site loads for me in Firefox and IE, but when checking the server response from the command line, it gives a 404 error.
u35452940:~ > time curl -I clutchmagonline.com/forums/
HTTP/1.1 404
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:14:13 GMT
Server: Apache
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
X-Pingback: http://clutchmagonline.com/xmlrpc.php
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=cec9b723687a4a88fc83b4a528c2017a; path=/
Last-Modified: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:14:15 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
real 0m1.550s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.000s
Is it possible that you have an .htaccess file with rewrite rules that would do something like this? That’s kind of interesting that it returns a 404 error but still loads the forum. Maybe there’s an ErrorDocument directive that directs the 404 error to the forum index page?
Weird.
The server response has been consistent though between IE, FF and command line, so I wouldn’t worry too much about the fact that it only happens sometimes. There is one thing making the 404 error happen on all browsers. I wonder what that is…
OFFTOPIC: I hate the fact that code in backticks has changed 0.8 em recently. It’s nearly unreadable. They must be working on the site since there have been a couple other CSS changes recently as well. Looks like the changes were made about a week ago.
I’m still getting the 404 about 95% of the time in IE. The front page of the forum usually loads, but clicking back and forth into some of the sub forums etc.. gives me a 404 pretty much every time, does this not happen for you in IE?
Not exactly sure what that command line response means, but in the forum directory there isn’t a .htaccess file, there used to be one in there when i had first tried to setup pretty permalinks, but i removed it that a few days ago when i found out bbpress + slugs + godaddy hosting does not work (which i don’t really understand but have given up on for now).
And our wordpress .htaccess file is pretty standard i think:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
A pretty large segment of our visitors use IE, so i don’t think we’ll be able to launch the forum as is with this error occuring.
The error does not occur for me consistently in IE. Normally, it loads everywhere fine. Are there specific pages that do not load for you or is it random?
The WordPress .htaccess looks fine.
Good to know it’s GoDaddy hosting (for troubleshooting anyway.)
The command line is just using command line tools on Linux to see the response from the server, which eliminates the possibility of it be a browser based issue.
The server always sends a 404 error, even though the page sometimes load. The fact that it sends a 404 is the problem. The fact that the page sometimes loads is something I don’t understand, but if you can fix the 404 response, the pages will always load fine, no matter which browser you use.
Are you redirecting from GoDaddy hosting to your website on another host?
no redirecting, everything is hosted on godaddy.
Can you force godaddy to use PHP5 instead of PHP4 by making this change to your .htaccess?
AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
Put that line at the top of your WordPress .htaccess if GoDaddy allows PHP5. I could not tell from your server response which version of PHP is being used. You could create a file called info.php with this in it:
<?php
phpinfo();
?>
then put it somewhere accessible via browser, then load it up. It will tell you the version of PHP being used. Try it before and after making that change to the .htaccess file.
Call that info.php then load it in a browser at whatever URL you choose.
I am curious to see if using PHP5 will make the 404 errors go away…
To test things further i did a fresh install of bbpress on a different server (this one hosted by hostgator) and again did the require_once wp-blog-header.php etc… and i’m getting a similar problem with these weird 404 errors. They occur much less frequently than the last forum but they are still there. And further, I just ran it through http://validator.w3.org and its giving me a 404 just like the other forum did. Here’s a link to this second test forum i just setup: http://formatmag.com/bbpress
I think this might be some sort of incompatibility between WordPress 2.3.3 and BBpress 0.8.3.1, since those are really the only similarities i can think of between these two test forums, since they are seperate domains and seperate servers and have the same problem.
Since godaddy takes a few hours to recognize htaccess files i did the php5 thing on the hostgator hosted site (formatmag.com) instead and it’s still giving the 404 errors despite the change.
http://clutchmagonline.com/forums/phpinfo.php (running 4.3.11)
http://formatmag.com/bbpress/phpinfo.php (now running php 5.2.2)
Also, one other thing i noticed with the hostgator hosted site is when i login into the admin and click the Users link it gives me this message “You are not allowed to do this here”.
As soon as i remove the call to wp-blog-header.php then the 404’s stop and the validator sites work with the forum URLs again.
You’re possibly getting 404’s only in IE because of session issues in Internet Explorer.
bbPress doesn’t use sessions by default so some other plugin must be putting them in (I have one that does and so does bb-post-views and possibly a few others).
IE is *very* picky about how sessions are done.
What plugins are you using?
Also, are you using multiviews in the .htaccess for bbPress? That could cause some issues. If so, use the real rewrite rules instead.
On the second test site i have setup i am not using any plugins in bbpress. I think the problem might be bigger than just IE, as indicated by the command line test Chris made and also since validator.w3.org is returning a 404 every time.
The command line test Chris made shows a PHP session.
bbPress by iteself without plugins does not initiate PHP sessions.
So what’s causing the sessions?
Just out of curiosity, why are you trying to run WP at the same time (within) bbPress? I don’t just mean integration, but simultaneous loading of WP within bbPress.
It’s a massive load that should be avoided if possible.
noyz319: I would try a stock installation of bbPress without the WordPress stuff. The require_once wp-blog-header.php seems to be fouling it up.
The server that Chris tested did have a few of plugins running at the time (Allow Images, Avatar Upload, Quote, Comment Quicktags) but regardless, the second test forum has no plugins and has the same errors.
As far as why i’m running wp and bbpress, thats so i don’t have to change multiple files whenever there’s an update to the header, footer, sidebar etc. and so i can use wordpress functions in sidebar to show recent posts, etc. Its one website so i’d like it to have just one set up templates.
dreamsofthequill: since _ck_ caught the session issue, I recalled that dotq.org also had a session in the response:
u39872340:~/riverside/bbpress-831 > time curl -I dotq.org
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:33:49 GMT
Server: Apache
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Pragma: no-cache
X-Pingback: http://dotq.org/xmlrpc.php
Set-Cookie: PHPSESSID=263b0ed23debf73f72bb98c377fb5fbb; path=/
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
real 0m5.749s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.000s
Maybe the issues are the same?
Yes, I definitely already know the require_once wp-blog-header.php is mucking things up, as i said above, when i remove that everything works fine, the 404s stop and the validator can read the forum.
I don’t think problem is with plugins, I think the problem is with the way WordPress is being called by bbPress, in both cases here. Hard to keep things straight with two people reporting problems, but since they’re the same type of problem, I think it’s good that they’re both in the same place.
