HTAccess stops me from accessing WordPress Dashboard links

Question

I have a WP site which I have not looked at for a while. I have just logged in to update aspects of it, including WP itself, now on 5.0.2.

Now if I click on any of the Dashboard links - Posts, Appearance etc - I get Page Not Found. If I delete the HTAccess then it works again ... until WP reinstates it. There is nothing special about the site.

The HTAccess is the standard WP one:

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

# END WordPress

How can I track down what is going wrong?

Answer 1

I've had this issue on a small number of sites (out of around 60 that I help manage), and I'm wondering if the issue is caused by caching (by a plugin or theme).

If you have a caching plugin, or a theme that does caching, there should be a tool in the Dashboard for emptying/clearing/deleting the cache. Click this, and see if it fixes the issue. I've only tried this once, but it did work.

I believe it is generally recommended to clear the cache whenever a software update is installed (plugin, theme, or WordPress), so that might be something you could try to add to your process in future to prevent the issue.

Answer 2

Try to change the theme first by activating default theme e.g. Twenty Nineteen and check your back-end to make sure that the issue is not your theme. If that did not work, do a plugin audit by de-activating all and re-activating them one by one.

Alternatively, you can go to settings > Permalinks and re-flush by just clicking the Save button (without any changes in the settings).

However, I suspect that it is a theme issue as you said, you have not checked your website for a while and the theme might not be already not compatible with latest WordPress version.

Hope that helps!