The original question was regarding a WordPress 404 error when clicking the Update File button in the Edit Themes WordPress appearance editor window. The site owner had mentioned that he had made modifications to both the core WordPress files and WordPress Theme files.
Rule out the simple stuff first: (This is general info. These 3 things below did not pertain to this particular person’s problem because it was happening with every theme)
Do your themes actually exist in the correct folder location? >>> /wp-content/themes/xxxxx
In Edit Themes what theme is showing in the Select theme to edit : window?
Did you modify the style sheet header for your theme?
Did you move, rename or edit any of the core WordPress files or folders? These are files outside of your particular WordPress theme folder. ie /wp-admin, /wp-includes, /wp-content
I’m assuming when you say “default theme templates” you mean WordPress Classic theme and WordPress Default theme, not the default templates contained within whichever theme you are currently using. Since this problem is happening with any WordPress theme you are using, even the default theme, this eliminates a theme specific problem or plugin specific problem obviously.
The core WordPress file that handles / processes updating file edits to theme files is /wp-admin/theme-editor.php.
Hover over the Update File button – what file path do you see in the bottom left corner of your web browser?
This sounds like an isolated problem with /wp-admin/theme-editor.php or other core WordPress files that are used in conjunction with this file. Instead of trying to find the file or code error you can just do a forced reinstall or restore your WordPress website from backup.
UPDATE:
As of the WordPress 3.0 version you can now do an automatic WordPress re-installation by clicking Updates under your Dashboard panel.
Try a forced reinstall of WordPress first (download any core WordPress files that you modified so that you have backups) > click on your Tools Panel > click Upgrade > click Reinstall Automatically. Restore WordPress from a backup: If you already had a WordPress backup plugin installed (I recommend WP-DBManager if you do not have it already installed) you can just restore your last good backup. If you didn’t have a WordPress backup plugin already installed you obviously will not have a backup of your WordPress website DB. 😉 You can also restore a backup of your website from your web host control panel.
Good luck.
Tags: 404 Error Appearance Editor WordPress, WordPress 404 Error Appearance Editor, WordPress Update File 404 Error
Categories: Wordpress Tips - Tricks - Fixes
thanks. good info