Today I was feeling great 
and saw 472000 search result of my name madhurie singh!
But the happiness did not last long 
when I found some of the links to my site were giving error : OOPS ! The Links is broken.
The page it takes the browser to is the dreaded 404 File Not Found!!!!
And the funny part is the link that takes me there was a page that I had never created i.e. www.madhuriesingh.com/tag/holiday !!!
Now I am wondering how on earth did this happen. What does this error mean?
Hmm this site explains it http://www.bloghighlight.com/broken-links-sinking-search-engine-rankings/ best.
http://www.bloghighlight.com/7-top-wordpress-seo-plugin-to-boost-blog-traffic/
SO I gave a search on 404 error tag link broken:
I see a great number of sites on the same error handling, so lemme start browsing and scanning for the best site:
The first site is http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_an_Error_404_Page.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/273787
http://perishablepress.com/press/2008/12/31/redirect-all-broken-links-from-any-domain-via-htaccess/
http://codex.wordpress.org/Glossary
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#Using_.22Pretty.22_permalinks
http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#PATHINFO:_.22Almost_Pretty.22
http://www.lunarforums.com/lunarpages_webhosting_help/problem_with_wordpress_404-t47372.0.html
This site claims to resolver all 404 error s by uploading a php file classes.php and functions-post.php
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/54340
Ok after reading here and there, one important thing that I have found is that I need a mod_rewrite installed and working and the server able to read the htaccess file.
I checked my .htaccess file which is in the root directory. I use File Manager in Cpanel to view it even though its a hidden file.
Legacy File Manager does not show hidden files.
My .htaccess file is blank even though I have done changes in permalinks of all my blogs.
It just has this in it
# BEGIN WordPress
# END WordPress
So obviously I need to make sure it has at least the mod_rewrite function to make the necessary changes that I have set through the wordpress admin page to all my blogs!
Let me find out the reason for the .htaccess file not being written !
1. One common reason is that the file is not accessible by the wordpress admin page to make the changes in .htaccess file for desired permalinks.
So I will have to change the permissions to allow the wordpress to write the .htaccess file. So I change its permission to 666 not 777.
Now I changed the permalinks from /%year%/%month%/%date%/%post%/ to /%index%
This is a great site for explaining the permalinks and how to solve errors because of permalinks:
http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/when-wordpress-permalinks-404-42939.html.
If nothing works I will check this site later http://www.lunarforums.com/lunarpages_webhosting_help/problem_with_wordpress_404-t47372.0.html
One thing no one will tell ! Never get the site up with test posts unless very sure. Else the bots will index these test files and save them in some server of google or any other engine. And then when that link pops up in the search it will give 404 error, as the file obviously does not exist !
So in case I need to test any page or post, I make sure I preview it several times and keep it live for a few minutes only.
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