Why are my CiviCRM queries rewritten to short links that do not work?

Question

I'm running a Wordpress 5.5.1 site with a custom theme that was working fine until a few months ago. With no changes to the site other than plug-in and Wordpress updates, the CiviCRM-generated pages no longer work in Live or test modes, and my site links are briefly displayed before being rewritten to short links that result in a blank template. CiviCRM is version 5.14.0.

Here's an example from the live site:https://cantusnovus.org/support-us/

On this page is an Orange button that links to: https://cantusnovus.org/civicrm/contribute/transact/?reset=1&id=4

When that is clicked, the link is rewritten as: https://cantusnovus.org/civicrm/?reset=1&id=4

To my knowledge, nothing has changed in the hosting environment or Wordpress templates or CiviCRM configuration. Here's what I've tried:

• I removed a redirection plugin I was using (no effect)
• I disabled/removed all plugins not directly needed by CiviCRM just to look for interference (no effect)
• I switched themes to test if something in my custom theme was interfering with the display (no effect)
• I checked (and simplified) .htaccess file to just standard Wordpress setup (no effect)

While CiviCRM works from the backend and I can access/edit forms, I cannot Preview them. I also can't see (preview) previous mailings, etc. I simply can't display anything in live/preview mode.

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

You'll need to upgrade CiviCRM. WP 5.5 made changes to how URL paths are handled which required changes in CiviCRM. I believe those changes were introduced in 5.26. So you will need to upgrade to at least that version to be compatible with WordPress 5.5+.

There was a blog post a while back with more details: https://civicrm.org/blog/kcristiano/civicrm-526-and-wordpress-important-notice