New menu items lead to 404 - given bad URL - version 3.4.0

Question

Running Joomla 3.4.0 SEF = on URL writing = on

I have no idea but for some reason I cannot create any new menu items without them either showing a 404 or strangely being directed to the weblinks page?

See the images for detail: (note all grey boxes are drawn on due to privacy policy)

Settings:

Other photos (some show successful menu item creation and menu item on the menu manager):

Where new menu items are linked to:

Messed-up weblinks admin panel. (note: other component admin sections are working fine):

We haven't made any core changes and I'm worried that we may have to restore a backup and lose 2-3 days work (much data). I just cannot figure out what has gone wrong? Why would menu items for category blogs give the link of:

domain.com/links/menu-item-alias

when working older existing links are like:

domain.com/menu-item-alias

I did delete some old menu items that were either unpublished or duplicates (on other menus), but after running into this problem I untrashed and published them, but no luck. I even ran a:

find /our/web/root -mmin -300 -print

in the terminal but it didn't return anything out of the ordinary.

All ideas and contributions are welcome. Thanks.

UPDATE: After writing this question... the marine and nautical matters link has changed to:

domain.com/marine-and-nautical-matters

and is working. However, the weblink component's admin panel is still in some sort of no styling view. I must go now, but will attempt to expand and solidify this question tomorrow. If you need to know any further information that I've missed, please comment on this question :) I'd be happy to update with changes.

Answer 1

I fixed this error. So I found out that this happens sometimes with peoples Joomla installations and it's most often occuring on Joomla systems that have been migrated from earlier versions.

the fix is actually built directly into the Joomla Admin panel. To fix this problem you need to go onto the menu manager and click the 'Rebuild' button. See the image below for illustration.

I hope this helps everyone with the same problem! :)

Answer 2

I've had the same problem. In my case the problem was SEO friendly Urls Renaming the htaccess.txt to .htaccess solved it

Leen

Answer 3

This sounds to me like an error in your .htaccess file. Make sure you've renamed htaccess.txt, and that it is properly configured. Pay special attention to the following line:

RewriteBase /

Uncomment the line if necessary.

I also think the WebLinks component has been updated after it was separated from the Joomla core. Check your available updates, and also make sure you use the latest version of Joomla, currently 3.4.5.