New installation can't be found due to htaccess of the original non-Wordpress site

Question

I have a non-Wordpress site , www.example.com

For canonicalization purposes I have this in .htaccess :

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]   

This way all non-www links will be redirected to www version of site.

Recently I decided to attach a wordpress blog at www.example.com/blog . After the installation is complete, whenever I go to www.example.com/blog I get 404 - Page not found error. I tried both auto install with Fantastico and a manual install, with the same result.

I found out that when I remove the piece of code above from my .htaccess it fixes the problem, and wordpress installation is accessable and usable.

However, I would like to keep the the original htaccess settings, for SEO purposes. I tried to change url version in wordpress General Settings and then restore main site htaccess file - it would still break the wordpress and 404 is back again.

I tried to add next code in wp-config.php :

define('WP_HOME','http://www.example.com/blog');
define('WP_SITEURL','http://www.example.com/blog');

It didn't fixed the problem either...

I understand it has something to do with htaccess. I also notices that there is no htaccess file in wordpress folder, probably due to the fact that I haven't changed permalinks settings yet.

I would appreciate any help on this matter!

P.S: I just noticed that www.example.com/blog/wp-login.php is visible regardless of htaccess config, however after I log in it brings me to 404 page again :(

Answer 1

As per @Milo, I'm adding my comment above as an answer...

Try going to example.com/blog/wp-admin/options-permalink.php. That should work, because the php file actually exists. If so, try updating your permalink options to a friendly version, like "Day and name". This will put a new .htaccess in the blog directory -- I'm thinking that that new .htaccess will override the one in the parent directory.

Answer 2

You don't need that code. WordPress itself handles redirects to canonical URLs. Just set it up to have the www address in Settings->General and it will redirect the traffic without your htaccess rules.