So we installed a fresh version of WP. Thanks for the help earlier.
The last issue we cannot figure out is why we cannot navigate the site.
Basically, when we try to navigate internally into the website we imported into the sandbox, it gives the following:
The requested URL /page-name/ was not found on this server.
If it's the ugly / default Permalink, we can view the files under pages, but we cannot navigate even. The pages were set to /page-name/, which I'm pretty sure is /%postname%/. I've scoured online. I've put up a blank .htaccess file, changed the permissions to 666 for writing purposes.
What I've tried included:
Replacing the .htaccess with a blank (I renamed the old one to be a backup) - it generates information to the file.
We can view pages manually that way, but we cannot navigate through the "live" site with it running this way.
Is there a second source I should be referring to for updates on the .htaccess file? Is there tricks online I may have overlooked? Any input would be appreciated!
Thank you!
Thank you Milap for the comment above! It turned out to be the AllowOverride being false. Apparently this have to be enabled in order for it to work. To those who plan to make this change, restarting your server is required.
Please refer to section AllowOverride Not Enabled section of their documentation: https://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Permalinks