If you’re seeing this, then this is a 403 error test. Every single time I publish some content, whether it be a game, a post, anything, I get a 403 error for a few hours, then it gets cached and it’s a pain. I have disabled all plugins, cleared my htaccess file, nothing I seem to do will fix it. I removed the trailing slash with this latest test and we will see if that fixes it with this particular post. If this doesn’t work, I have no idea what to do, so hopefully this works. If it does then I will update this post.
Update: Well there is no 404 error, the previous post does have a 404 error, even though it’s showing /403.shtml/ in the URL, so I am not sure why, but it is definitely going to the 404 page. Removing the trailing slash seems to have fixed it for now, or it’s because there’s currently one already up with the 404. My site is almost 20 years old, I have never done a fresh install of WordPress. I have updated my tables manually to be InnoDB and not MyISAM since no WordPress update addressed that. I have moved from Dreamhost to Hostgator, to a VPS. All that could play a factor in this too. Is removing the trailing slash the fix for this? Maybe. It appears to be. Everything so far looks okay, so I guess we will see when I post the next article. Initially I thought it was a cache issue, but with Supercache disabled and Cloudflare in development mode, it was still doing it. At least now, if it does happen without the trailing slash, instead of going to /403.shtml/ it should just go to 403.shtml, which could show the right page.
I am not sure how this will affect the new stuff that I alluded to in the previous post though. I will know for sure when I get the first one or two up, but through testing it right now, everything looks okay. I guess time will tell for sure though.
Have you ever experienced anything like this before, where published posts will go to /403.shtml/ and call a 404 page instead? Did removing the trailing slash fix it for you too?