I have a custom theme and when I try to export the posts for the custom post type called 'news' via Dashboard > Tools > 'News' > Download Export File (image attached) I get a 403 'Forbidden' message on my localhost set up. On the live site I get a 404 error.

Does anybody know how to correct this issue?

Thanks in advance for an assistance.

I have a custom theme and when I try to export the posts for the custom post type called 'news' via Dashboard > Tools > 'News' > Download Export File (image attached) I get a 403 'Forbidden' message on my localhost set up. On the live site I get a 404 error.

Does anybody know how to correct this issue?

Thanks in advance for an assistance.

• custom-post-types
• 404-error
• export

• Can you first try switching to the default theme and try again with the export? Or deactivate all plugins (except if any, the one you used to register the post type) instead of switching to the default theme. – Sally CJ Commented Feb 5, 2021 at 9:23
• Hi @SallyCJ I tried it with the 2021 theme and turned off all fo the plugins and it still happened. I also removed all of the code from my function.php file but it still happens. My custom theme is really lightweight too. – pjk_ok Commented Feb 5, 2021 at 20:53
• Are you able to check the exact error message? Maybe it's just some directory/file permissions issue, but try enabling debugging and see if the logs say anything relevant. Does the issue happen when you export the other post types? And although I'm not positive about this, try flushing the rewrite rules - just visit the permalink settings page. – Sally CJ Commented Feb 6, 2021 at 6:07
• 1 hi @SallyCJ - it was some code in my .htaccess file causing the problem. Explanation posted below as an answer. – pjk_ok Commented Feb 8, 2021 at 3:06

1 Answer 1

I found the solution to this problem. It was the security code below that I had in my .htaccess file that was being used to stop author scans of my site. On removing this I could then export any type of post with the export tool.

# BEGIN block author scans
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} (author=\d+) [NC]
RewriteRule .* - [F]
# END block author scans