The requested URL /about was not found on this server

Question

The home page of my wordpress website seems to be displaying correctly but if you click through to any of the other pages I get the following error message:

Answer 1

That's not a typical Wordpress rewrite block. This is:

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

See http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks#Where.27s_my_.htaccess_file.3F

Where's my .htaccess file? WordPress's index.php and .htaccess files should be together in the directory indicated by the Site address (URL) setting on your General Options page. Since the name of the file begins with a dot, the file may not be visible through an FTP client unless you change the preferences of the FTP tool to show all files, including the hidden files. Some hosts (e.g. Godaddy) may not show or allow you to edit .htaccess if you install WordPress through the Godaddy Hosting Connection installation.

Creating and editing (.htaccess) If you do not already have a .htaccess file, create one. If you have shell or ssh access to the server, a simple touch .htaccess command will create the file. If you are using FTP to transfer files, create a file on your local computer, call it 1.htaccess, upload it to the root of your WordPress folder, and then rename it to .htaccess.

You can edit the .htaccess file by FTP, shell, or (possibly) your host's control panel.

The easiest and fastest thing to do it reset your permalinks in Dashboard>>Settings>>Permalinks and make sure .htaccess is writable so WordPress can write the rules itself.

And: are you aware you are calling index.cgi as your default document rather than index.php? That's wrong. Remove index.cgi. Or try removing the whole line, too, because defining a default doc on your server may not be needed.