Capability sweep (recipe r66): inner pages return 404 after a site move because stored rewrite rules are out of date
What the site owner saw
After the site move, the homepage loaded but inner pages returned HTTP 404, because the rewrite rules stored for the site no longer matched it.
Source: capability sweep (one or more problem types from the "What we fix" page planted on one test site); there is no single forum thread.
Test setup and what we observed after the failure
Test site: WordPress 7.1, PHP 8.3. The table shows the HTTP status of the homepage and the login page after the recipe recreated the failure.
| Server setup | Homepage | Login page | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apache + PHP-FPM | 200 | 200 | |
| Apache + php-cgi (mod_cgid) | 200 | 200 | |
| Apache + mod_php | 200 | 200 | |
| nginx + PHP-FPM | 200 | 200 |
Outcome of each run
| Date (UTC) | Server setup | Connection mode | Outcome | Product version | Note | Result per problem type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-11-08 | Apache + PHP-FPM | FTP | Recovered | 2.1.438 | permalinkStale: Cleared | |
| 2026-11-08 | Apache + PHP-FPM | SSH | Recovered | 2.1.438 | permalinkStale: Cleared | |
| 2026-11-08 | Apache + php-cgi (mod_cgid) | FTP | Recovered | 2.1.438 | permalinkStale: Cleared | |
| 2026-11-08 | Apache + php-cgi (mod_cgid) | SSH | Recovered | 2.1.438 | permalinkStale: Cleared | |
| 2026-11-08 | Apache + mod_php | FTP | Recovered | 2.1.438 | permalinkStale: Cleared | |
| 2026-11-08 | Apache + mod_php | SSH | Recovered | 2.1.438 | permalinkStale: Cleared | |
| 2026-11-08 | nginx + PHP-FPM | FTP | Recovered | 2.1.438 | permalinkStale: Cleared | |
| 2026-11-08 | nginx + PHP-FPM | SSH | Recovered | 2.1.438 | permalinkStale: Cleared |
Problem types this case covers
Notes
All runs used the small test site. WP admin mode was not run in this series.
Changes to this record
- 2026-11-09 — Added 1 run from the lab run log.
- 2026-11-09 — Added 1 run from the lab run log.
- 2026-11-09 — Added 1 run from the lab run log.
- 2026-11-09 — Added 1 run from the lab run log.
- 2026-11-09 — Added 1 run from the lab run log.
- 2026-11-09 — Added 1 run from the lab run log.
- 2026-11-09 — Added 1 run from the lab run log.
These are records from our test servers, for a given product version on a given day. They are not a promise about the result on any site. Other hosts, PHP versions, and WordPress versions can behave differently.