wp-admin 404 Page Not Found Error

wp-admin 404 Page Not Found Error

I ran into an interesting problem today. A client who was not under a maintenance service contract was updating their own site. The WordPress core update had a conflict with their WordPress theme which resulted in a website crash. Naturally they called us.

I fixed the programming conflict in their theme. The site owner attempted to login to the WordPress dashboard to continue his updates when he found that he could no longer load the wp-admin page.

This got us thinking about all of the basic things… was he using the correct username and password? Did he have an old version of the website cached from the crash? Did his previous update “half-apply” and confuse WordPress? Was Google Chrome suddenly failing? (IE had the same 404 error)

It was a real head scratcher because nothing I could do over the phone was getting him past the 404 error. My next step was to look into the web server logs for possible clues.

After a little searching, I found his login attempts:

wp-admin 404 error

Do you see the problem? He was attempting to login at /WP-ADMIN in upper-case! Their store inventory system uses all caps so this was normal for him. Once I informed him that the path part of URLs are case sensitive, the regular lower-case /wp-admin login worked like a charm.

These simple mistakes can be very time consuming. This client is a successful building supplies company. They are great at what they do but being WordPress IT experts isn’t their core business. OnSiteWP exists to help clients with WordPress support and maintenance. With our maintenance service contracts, we handle the WordPress updates and allow you to focus on your business. Sign up today!

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