Hello,
Thank you for getting in touch and I am extremely sorry about the trouble this might have caused.
Soft 404 is not an actual 404. It basically means the page looks and behaves like a 404 even though it is not reporting as a 404 page. The common reason for this is is the page has little or no Content which is usually the same for a 404 page. You can either add some more content to this page, mark it as noindex or redirect it to a relative page.
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Thanks for the reply, since this is my author username I wasn’t sure where to add more content since it isn’t a page. Would it be wise to force redirect to one of my blog posts?
Hello,
Thank you for the follow up.
If you don’t intend for these pages to be accessed or indexed, you can simply disable the author archives in Rank math > Titles & Meta > Authors which will automatically redirect all author URLs to your homepage:
Hope that helps and please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
Thanks again for replying, the setting is disabled. Thanks for all the help.
Hello,
Then your author URLs should be redirected to your homepage. Is this not the case on your site?
Could you please share some of your user URLs so we can check from our end?
Looking forward to helping you.
Hello,
The page with the soft 404 is https://www.lucky7sales.com/author/buzltyr_qhq64915/ It’s me as the author. The other user urls direct beck to the owners site. It has There has been a critical error on your website.
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.
When that URL is searched.
Hello,
Assuming you are using the latest version of all the plugins and the themes (please update if not yet), it would seem like a conflict with one of the plugins or the theme you are using.
To determine that, please follow this troubleshooting guide:
https://rankmath.com/kb/check-plugin-conflicts/
Only the site admin would know and your users won’t be affected by this troubleshooting.
If the issue persists, please record a video screencast using a tool like Loom showing the troubleshooting and edit the first post on this ticket and include your WordPress & FTP logins in the designated Sensitive Data section.
It is completely secure and only our support staff has access to that section. If you want, you can use the below plugin to generate a temporary login URL to your website and share that with us instead:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/temporary-login-without-password/
You can use the above plugin in conjunction with the WP Security Audit Log to monitor what changes our staff might make on your website (if any):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-security-audit-log/
Please do take a complete backup of your website before sharing the information with us.
We really look forward to helping you.
I want to have you look. in the login without passwords I need an email to set up. The issue persists.
Hello,
I’m sorry for the delay and for any inconvenience this issue may have caused you.
You can use s******@r*********** as an email and include the log in link in the designated Sensitive Data section.
I hope that helps. Thank you, and looking forward to your update.
Hello,
I have updated the sensitive data as requested. Can you please check further?
Thank you.
Hello,
The issue with critical error seems to be related to WooCommerce conflicting with the (Simply) Guest Author Name plugin and nothing to do with Rank math, check the screencast I have added in the sensitive section.
WooCommerce does have a my-account page, I suspect the guest author plugin is conflicting with this resulting to the error. You will need to get in touch with the plugin support to look assist you in this issue.
Hope this helps.
That seemed to work, thanks for the heads up.
Hello,
Glad that helped.
Please feel free to reach out to us again in case you need any other assistance.
We are here to help.
Thank you.
