I see a 404 error page when accessing galleries through my web integration – what can I do?

Do you use picdrop’s web integration on your server according to our instructions and you experience this phenomenon:

• The link directly to your account works and you see your gallery overview. So e.g. www.yoursite.com/picdrop works perfectly.
• But all links to the individual galleries in your web integration show an error page. More precisely: a 404 error page with the design of your own website.

In this case it is very likely that you have installed the web integration correctly on your server. A file with the name .htaccess also ended up in your web integration folder. Apparently there is another .htaccess file on your server in a main folder, which gets in the way of the web integration.

Technical explanation: What exactly is an .htaccess file?

An .htaccess file is a configuration file for Apache servers, among others. In a .htaccess file several functions can be controlled: e.g. password protection for individual areas of your server, rules for automatic redirection of URLs, etc.

Possible conflicts produced by multiple .htaccess files

If you use Wordpress for your website, then you most likely already have another .htaccess file on your server that ensures that for a given URL, the appropriate file is always loaded on your server. If the .htaccess file does not find a matching result on your server, a 404 error page will be displayed. All of this is handled by the .htaccess file in the main folder of your server.

The web integration of picdrop also provides an .htaccess file. In this file is therer are rules, how the links to your galleries must be forwarded in the background, so that your galleries can be displayed. 

Now it can happen that the .htaccess file in your main folder can not find a rule for a gallery URL and is then always automatically redirected to an error page. So the .htaccess file in your web integration directory is bypassed and can't resolve the link to a gallery.

How can I get rid of the 404 error page?

To do this, you need to make adjustments to the .htaccess file in the main folder that belongs to your website. You need to add an exception in this file that explicitly excludes the web integration directory on your server from being handled by your .htaccess file. 

Unfortunately, we can't provide a universal solution for this, as it may look different on every website. If you are not familiar with this yourself, the person who usually takes care of your website, i.e. your webmaster, is the right person to talk to! Feel free to forward the link to this article so you can quickly find the right approach!

One more note about WordPress plugins

Especially when using WordPress it can also happen that plugins, e.g. plugins to speed up your site or for search engine optimization, repeatedly make changes to the .htaccess – even a web integrations that previously worked, can suddenly point to the 404 error page after some plugin updates. If you are suddenly experiencing these 404 error pages it might be good idea to check your latest plugin updates!