Wordpress REST API (wp-api) 404 Error: Cannot access the WordPress REST API

I have been using the Wordpress REST plugin WP-API for months now while developing locally with XAMPP. I recently migrated my site to an EC2 instance and everything is working fine **except** I now get a 404 with the following message whenever I try to access any endpoint on the API:

> The requested URL /wordpress/wp-json/ was not found on this server

**Pretty permalinks are enabled** with the following structure `http://.../wordpress/sample-post/` which works fine when navigating to a specific post in the browser.

Here are some details about my setup:

- Wordpress 4.4.1
- **Not a Multisite**
- WP REST API plugin 2.0-beta9
- Apache 2.2.22
- Ubuntu 12.04.5

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have gone through SO and the WP Support forums for several hours and am out of ideas. Thank you!

It turned out to be a problem with the Apache configuration.

First, I deleted the `.htaccess` file in the root wordpress directory.

Next, I navigated to `/etc/apache2/sites-enabled` and opened `000-default`

All of the `AllowOverride` variables were set to None, which I replaced with `All`.

That did the trick!

**UPDATED NEW WAY**

I also faced similar problem in a local project. **I used `index.php` after my project url** and it worked.

[To see links please register here]

**If it displays a 404 error then [update permalinks first](

[To see links please register here]

)** (see "Paged Navigation Doesn't Work" section

If it works, maybe you need to enable `mod_rewrite`, on ubuntu:

a2enmod rewrite
sudo service apache2 restart


## Installation

> The REST API is included in WordPress 4.7! Plugins are no longer required, just install the latest version of WordPress and you're ready to go.

If you're before 4.7:

1. Download plugin from here:

[To see links please register here]

2. install and activate it.

## Usage

To get all posts:

[To see links please register here]

For the search functionality, searching for test post looks like this:

/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?filter[s]=test

I had this problem with the latest WordPress 4.7+. In my case the REST API only worked after I changed the permalinks setting to something other than "Plain", which was the default setting for my installation.

On WPEngine and WP 4.9.2 I only had to update permalinks to get fresh, newly installed site to return v2 API calls. What I did:

1. Create site
2. Browse to

[To see links please register here]

- get 404
3. Go to admin, settings, permalinks, choose "Post Name"
4. Click "Save Changes"
5. Browse to

[To see links please register here]

- success. page displays JSON response

**I had to manually make a `.htaccess`, set it to `chmod 664`, and copy the permalink rules into it.**

*I also played around with*

- Settings > Permalinks
- Manually updating .htaccess via the code at the bottom of the permalinks page after clicked "Save"
- Adding "index.php" as one of the other answers suggests
- Making sure `mod rewrite` was enabled via `a2enmod`

I had moved the WordPress install from a subdirectory to another, so in my case the problem was due to the WordPress config in the `.htaccess` files. It was trying to redirect every page but the homepage to the old directory. It was just a matter of updating `olddir` to `newdir`...
This tripped me up more than once so I thought I'd put it here...

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /olddir/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /olddir/index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

I solved this issue through following steps:

1. Navigate to ..\Apache24\conf\httpd.conf and search for `LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so`.

2. Enable rewrite module by removing the `#` mark.

3. Replace all the cases of `AllowOverride None` to `AllowOverride All`.

4. Don't forget to restart apache server. :)

I found that `mysite/wp-json/` was not working, but `mysite/?rest_route=/` was normal. This was breaking some, but not all, the REST API features used on my site.

The answer to this turned out to be a recent change to how I was running my server. This had broken REST API but this was not apparent until later.

I had changed this domain from using Apache to using nginx, and I had not correctly transferred the `.htaccess` customisations. The quick solution to this problem was therefore to change back to using Apache. This restored the site to working order immediately.

I will be changing this domain back to nginx in the future but when I do, I will test it and be careful not to affect the REST API.

It is the file permission **error**, apply the following **solution**:

Edit this file `/etc/apache2/apache2.conf`
Change `/var/www/` Permissions from "None" to "All"
Restart the `apache2` server.