When on the Permalinks settings page, make sure your settings are correct. In most cases, unless you have a unique permalink structure, you’ll want to select Post name.
Once you’ve checked to see if the right permalink structure has been selected, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the button that says Save Changes. In most cases, this should regenerate permalinks in WordPress. When you’ve saved the changes, the page will give you a message at the top, that the permalinks have been changed.
Once you’ve done this, navigate to the front of your website and check your pages to make sure that they are working properly. So simple, right?
What to do if refreshing or regenerating your permalinks didn’t work?
In the case that the permalinks in WordPress didn’t regenerate, you’ll have to do a little troubleshooting. When this occurs, it is possible that you may have updated a plugin, theme, or WordPress core files, and something may have made your permalinks stop working correctly.
To check for a plugin conflict:
Before checking, make sure you’ve got a backup of WordPress. If not, you need to backup your WordPress site. To check for a plugin conflict, you’ll want to shut off your plugins, and then reactivate them one-by-one. Before reactivating, you’ll want to check the front of your website to see if your pages turn up a 404 error, or a page not found message.
To shut off the plugins, as long as you have WordPress admin access, go to your Plugins section. Check the box next to each plugin, and then select the Deactivate option. When doing this, please note that the site might not look right. However, that’s temporary and will come back when you’ve reactivated your plugins.
The plugin that is creating the 404 error will be the one you just reactivated. When you’ve encountered it, deactivate it. You may need to keep it that way until you replace it with one that works right, or when the plugin’s developer updates. Make sure to submit a support ticket with the plugin developer so they’re aware of the error that their plugin may be causing.
To check for a theme conflict:
Before checking, make sure to backup your site. Theme conflict checks are simple. Just go to the Themes area under Appearance, in your WordPress admin, and activate a default WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty-Two. You will not lose your settings from your preferred theme, and should be able to switch back without having to set anything back up again.
Once you’ve set a default WordPress theme as the active theme, check the frontend of your website. Click on any post or page. If they are working correctly, then it was your theme.
To check to see if WordPress was the problem:
There’s not much to do, other than go to the Updates area under your Dashboard section of your WordPress admin menu, which is the very first menu item. Make sure WordPress is backed up.
On the Updates page, you’ll see something about “You have the latest version of WordPress.”, and a Re-install button under it. Click on the re-install. You shouldn’t lose your site. This only gives you fresh WordPress core files.
Hopefully one of these methods have resolved your permalink issue.
