Help, my blog looks ugly, no stylesheets seem to be applied, and I get HTTP 404 errors or even 500 internal server errors all the way when browsing the page!
Serendipity offers several forms of URL Rewriting, to make your URLs look pretty. So instead of having the URL "
http://localhost/index.php?article=1" you can have something nice like "
http://localhost/archives/1-myentry.html".
To achieve this, Serendipity either uses mod_rewrite or the Apache Errorhandling functionality. Both may not be available on all hosts, and require a certain setup ("Allowoverride All") to apply rewriting within your .htaccess file. Serendipity tries to autodetect your best setting in the installer, but under certain circumstances, this might fail. Or you might even change the suggested setting during installation without knowing the problems.
The problems of enabling URL Rewriting without meeting the requirements are the problems you're now having: Stylesheet URLs cannot be find, article links cannot be found and so on, or even your .htaccess might contain "dangerous" settings.
You can easily fix this by entering your admin panel with the "
http://localhost/serendipity_admin.php" URL. Then enter the configuration area, and set "URL Rewriting" to "None" and save your config. Make sure your .htaccess file is writable!
Another problem that calls this symtopms is that your .htaccess file might not be parsed/readable by the webserver. Check your permissions or contact your provider to check the Apache errorlogs for detailed information.
What can also affect the symptom of "no stylesheets are used" is if you enabled the 'embed' directive in Serendipity Configuration. As mentioned in the Configuration, if you enabled this setting, you must take care for the HTML head and body sections for yourself, Serendipity only outputs the straight content and nothing different. So either disable the embed mode, or use it as intended.
I LOVE S9Y
