Changing Wordpress Address URL disaster

Question

I made a mistake and changed the URL under settings -> General. After this Wordpress locked me out. I first added in the wp-congif.php file:

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

This appeared to have fixed the issue but only if I was logged into Wordpress. Users could not enter to the website and they have a forbidden message. My URL to visit my test site would redirect me always to my homepage, etc.

I also resetted the htcaccess file but nothing seems to do the trick. I finally uploaded a full backup of my site and the problem is still there, nothing works and the site is completely broken. Any ideas?

My current htaccess file looks like this:

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /guiacentros/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /guiacentros/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Answer 1

Fixed by adding a htaccess file to the root directory with this information:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?example.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/my_subdir/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /my_subdir/$1
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www.)?example.com$
RewriteRule ^(/)?$ my_subdir/index.php [L] 
</IfModule>

The main issues was Wordpress being installed in a subdirectory, so the root URL was "example.com/subdirectory" instead of "example.com". This htaccess comfiguration does redirect users properly.

Source: https://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory

Answer 2

Take a look in the wp_options table and check the values for siteurl and home - these are the values that would have been changed when you submitted the form, so you could change them back directly there. This may not be it but it's worth trying.