[SOLVED] News/Pretty URLs not working correctly

[quethiock]

Hi guys

I am having problems with News items not responding correctly to the PrettyURLs Rewrite commands after the ISP upgraded Apache to version 2.4.9 at the weekend.

Current Basic System Information:
CMS MS 1.11.10 (i.e. up to date)
News Module 2.4.12 (i.e. up to date)
Apache 2.4.9
PHP 5.3.28
MySQL 5.5.37-cll
Perl version 5.8.8

The problem is that the PrettyURLs work for the normal pages, the website shows the News Summary item correctly, it shows the (PrettyURL) link to '[more...]' correctly and the link is a PrettyURL as expected but it does not pull up the page when that link is clicked - I get a 404 every time.

I put the REQUEST_URI info to display in the 404 error page, and the page requested and not found is the actual PrettyURL

So, it was correctly asking for (example):
news-members-our-website-attacked.html

and the actual page (no PrettyURL) is:
index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=30&cntnt01origid=83&cntnt01returnid=73

Contents of relevant bits of config.php:
$config['url_rewriting'] = 'mod_rewrite';
$config['page_extension'] = '.html';
$config['use_hierarchy'] = '1';
$config['query_var'] = 'page';

Contents of all of the .htaccess file:
#Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} !POST$
RewriteRule ^(.*) %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?page=$1 [QSA]

The server is obviously not translating the PrettyURL version of the link to the page of the full News Item into a URL that the server (or CMSMS) can find. I've gone through the items in the .htaccess file line by line, compared with what the Apache website says for the Rewrite commands to ensure I hadn't missed something, something was no longer valid, or the definition of what it did had changed ... but nothing obvious.

I wonder if it is that a webpage real URL starts with index.php?page= whereas the News Item starts with index.php?mact= but it worked before so why not now?

It might be un-related but a problem shows up in the error log files (but not just when I am testing the pages):
[Tue Jul 08 10:51:29.473045 2014] [authz_core:error] [pid 15547] [client yy.yy.yy.yy:16340] AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /home/imtdorgu/public_html/
As that is in all entries in the error log, I suspect that is a problem with configuration of the server and I will ask them to check it out.

Due to a (still ongoing) DDOS attack so the world is denied access to the website by the commands in the .htaccess file:
Require all denied
Require ip xx.xx.xx.xx

where xx.xx.xx.xx is my IP Address

Has anybody come across this before or could offer me any suggestions/advice please?

Regards

Quethiock (aka Mike)

[JohnnyB]

Try going into Site Maintenance and updating the Routes.

[quethiock]

Try going into Site Maintenance and updating the Routes.

Thanks very much for the suggestion - I thought "That's interesting, never tried that before ... or even thought of doing that".

Updated Routes, and updated Page Hierarchy positions while I was there, cleared the cache, tried again after clearing the Browser Cache with Cntrl-F5 .... but just the same result sadly.

Created a 'new' News Release to see if it was something with the current ones having been corrupted or similar. No, just the same result.

Again, thanks for the suggestion, appreciate it. Was hoping it would resolve it but no such joy.

Regards

Quethiock (aka Mike)

[quethiock]

It might be un-related but a problem shows up in the error log files (but not just when I am testing the pages):
[Tue Jul 08 10:51:29.473045 2014] [authz_core:error] [pid 15547] [client yy.yy.yy.yy:16340] AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /home/imtdorgu/public_html/
As that is in all entries in the error log, I suspect that is a problem with configuration of the server and I will ask them to check it out.

That bit is now resolved - the ISP confirmed it was the correct entry showing that an IP address had not met the criteria for accessing the site so that's one theory gone.

[quethiock]

Found out this afternoon that the PrettyURL's are not the issue here. Removed all the Pretty URL commands from .htaccess and config.php so it was back to native CMS language where the full details of the News Item URL is something like:

/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=32&cntnt01origid=77&cntnt01returnid=73

and that doesn't work either so the PrettyURLs was not the cause of the problem.

Cheers

Mike

[JohnnyB]

Couple things to try:

Contents of all of the .htaccess file:
#Options +FollowSymLinks

enable that in your .htaccess

and then post the text output of the Site Information form the admin.

Do you have a detail page assigned in the news tag and/or news settings?

[quethiock]

Couple things to try:

Contents of all of the .htaccess file:
#Options +FollowSymLinks

enable that in your .htaccess

I have tried that in parallel with your message coming in.

Do you have a detail page assigned in the news tag and/or news settings?

I didn't until 10 minutes ago so I created one and .... Whoopeee! It worked.

What I can't understand was that it worked before the version of Apache was updated without that News page.

JohnnyB - Thanks for your ideas and suggestion - it did encourage me and help get the fix. I really do appreciate your help in this.