I was messing around with .htaccess and php.ini files in my blog directory, trying to fix an irksome “HTTP error” that appears when I upload pictures. (Strangely, the pictures still seem to upload sometimes.) Lots of suggested fixes are floating around the internet, but none of them worked for me. I have a feeling that upgrading to PHP 5, as suggested here, would work for me, but I had built my theme (and the rest of my website) based on PHP 4, since that was the only version available to me when I first started. One day, when I have lots of time to check the entire site, I’ll see about upgrading.

Meanwhile, I deleted the .htaccess and php.ini files I had put in my blog directory, but then I realized that I was redirected to my main site’s 404 error page when I tried to view a single post, a category, or anything but the main blog index page. The problem didn’t clear when I emptied the browser cache, either. I panicked for about three minutes and then realized the issue might lie with my URL rewriting. So, I changed the settings for permalinks back to the default (which shows the query string, something like index.php?p=506) and then back to the permalinks I wanted. This appears to have corrected the problem.