WordPress Pages Not Found After Moving to Another Hosting
When you are moving from one web host to another you need to make sure that all your domains are still active. One of the things that you need to check is the settings for your wordpress pages. If you are getting random 404 errors when trying to access your wordpress site (whether it is live or a previously built site) then it might be time to make some changes.
In this blog post we will discuss some tips on how to make sure that all of your wordpress pages are still active after you have moved your sites to another host. Since we will be discussing live sites we will be using a premium wordpress host called “FullyStack” for this example.
Verify All Links Are Still Working
The first thing you need to do is make sure that all your links work. There are several reasons why you might be getting 404 errors (not found web pages) but the most common one is that the link is pointing to a non-existent page. Make sure that all of your links work by going to the other host and using a tool like “Open Site Explorer” or “WPTools” to identify any broken links. A broken link is often times accompanied by a 404 error because search engines like Google index the page when it is first published but then eventually remove it from their index if the page is no longer available. So if you are ever getting a broken link error make sure that you fix it as soon as possible because once the link is broken it will never do anyone any good (even if it is a direct link to a product or service you are selling).
Check For Errors In The CSS
The second thing you need to do is make sure that all of your CSS (cascading style sheet) is valid. A CSS file is often times overlooked when moving to another host because all the sites you have ever built before probably worked just fine with no CSS whatsoever. However, that is certainly not the case anymore. When you are creating a new site you need to make sure that all the CSS that is included is up to date and valid otherwise you will find yourself in the situation where a part of your site does not display correctly. This can be a real pain to debug especially if you do not have the original CSS file anymore (especially if it is a WordPress maintenance package that you installed). If you are ever in doubt whether or not the CSS you are using is valid then you can use the W3C CSS Validator to verify it.
Check For Errors In The HTML
The third thing you need to do is make sure that all of your HTML code is valid. This is probably the most important step because any kind of error in the HTML code can cause the page to not display correctly. You will find most of the time that the HTML code is a direct result of the CSS file not being up to date or valid. Take a look at the HTML you are working with right now – are all the tags correct? Are all the attributes within the tags correctly named (like class or id)? Are all the child elements of a given element (like a p tag inside of an h2 tag) in the right order? Make sure to check all of these things before you start making changes. Even if all the other parts of the site are functioning properly, an invalid HTML code can still cause problems. In rare cases, an invalid HTML code can even cause major security issues if it is not fixed.
Adjust The WordPress Settings
The last thing you need to do is to make sure that the WordPress settings are all active and populated correctly. This means that you need to go into your WordPress Dashboard and make sure that all of the necessary boxes are checked. The first thing you need to do is to make sure that the “Site URL” is correct (this is the address that people will enter into their browsers to visit your site). If you are changing ISPs then you will most likely need to edit the “Site URL” and also the “Home URL” (this is the address that will show up when someone clicks on the site’s logo in their browser).
If you are getting 404 errors when trying to access your site then it might be time to make some changes. Moving from one web host to another can be a lot more complicated than just changing the hosts file and making sure that all the domains are still active. If you need any help with this process you can contact us and we will be happy to help you out.