Sitemap issue? 404's & 500's are regenerating?

[JanetJ]

I am using the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast to generate a sitemap on http://www.atozqualityfencing.com. Last month, I had an associate create redirects for over 200 404 errors. She did this via the .htaccess file. Today, there are the same amount of 404s along with a number of 503 errors. This new Wordpress website was constructed on a subdirectory and made live by simply entering some code into the .htaccess file in order to direct browsers to the content we wanted live. In other words, the content actually resides in a subdirectory titled "newsite" but is shown live on the main url.

Can you tell me why we are having these 404 & 503 errors? I have no idea where to begin looking.

[jeff-rackaid.com]

You likely have a .htaccess issue causing a rewrite error.   You may want to examine or replace your .htaccess with a default.   Also, I've seen some plugins cause this error.

What is happening is this:

http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite

is sent to:

http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite/

Note the trailing slash.

But that page is returning a 404 error.

If I go to

http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite/index.php it redirects to

http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite/

So there is likely something wrong in the redirect rules.   I would try disabling all plugins. If that fails, compare the current htaccess to a default one and remove any modifications.

.

[JanetJ]

Wondering if anyone else out there has some insight as to whether the information in my previous post seems to be correct.

[JanetJ]

Oye, Jeff - this is a little bit over my head so bear with me as I work it through.

I went to redbot.org and entered the url of where the main website is actually living (http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite). I received this information:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
    Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 14:56:10 GMT
    Server: Apache
    Location: [http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite/](https://redbot.org/?uri=http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite/&req_hdr=Referer%3Ahttp://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite)
    Cache-Control: max-age=3600
    Expires: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 15:56:10 GMT
    Content-Length: 326
    Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100
    Connection: Keep-Alive
    Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

When I clicked on the url listed under Location above, I receive the following information:

HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Sun, 24 Aug 2014 14:59:59 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Pingback: http://www.atozqualityfencing.com/newsite/xmlrpc.php
Expires: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 05:00:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
Pragma: no-cache
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100
Connection: Keep-Alive
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

  This has me confused and I wondering if the method used for making the revised website is either not good or is missing something. Here are the articles that were followed for "moving" the newsite redesign to the live url.
```

[http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory](http://codex.wordpress.org/Giving_WordPress_Its_Own_Directory)

[http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress#When_Your_Domain_Name_or_URLs_Change](http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress#When_Your_Domain_Name_or_URLs_Change)

```
Can you provide any further assistance?

Thanks,
Janet

```

[jeff-rackaid.com]

A 503 error is a service unavailable error.  I have seen situations where redirects are incorrect and loop.  Depending on the hosting setup, this can trigger various HTTP error codes.

The best way to debug this is by looking at your Apache access logs.  Scan your logs for the 503 errors. Pay attention to the URL being requested as well as the referring URL.

Very likely, there's some looping process and in cases when Apache runs on FastCGI, you can get a 503 error due to too many processes being triggered.

Also, due to how WP handles 404's, I've seen many plugins mask underlying causes. So if you have any plugins that impact error handling, you may need to remove those while debugging.

You can also use http://www.redbot.org/ to check the headers for any page that should be redirected. That tool should return a Location header with a URL.  Visit that Location URL in your browser and make sure it resolves.

The goal here is to try to replicate the behavior. Once you can replicate the behavior, dig into your redirect/rewrite rules and examine the logic to determine why you are seeing the loops or failures.