WordPress Permalink Page is Blank

Problem

This problems comes up with various versions of WordPress; in this case, it applied to version 3.2.1. Sometimes, after an installation of WordPress on certain servers, the Permalink Settings page, in the site administration, comes up blank. The menu displays, as well as the site name at the top of the page, but nothing within the content area.

The problem appears to be that WordPress is NOT compatible with newer versions of PHP. When I encountered the problem, I was using PHP version 5.2.17, one of the latest releases of version 5.2 right now.

Solution

To fix this problem, we need to force WordPress to acknowledge that mod_rewrite is up and running. If you know that it is up an running for sure on the server, then an edit needs to be made in the /wp-admin/includes/misc.php file. Find the following line of code, near the top of the file, and make the edits below:

function got_mod_rewrite() {
  //$got_rewrite = apache_mod_loaded('mod_rewrite', true); //old line with false negative;
  $got_rewrite = true;//force the response to true as we know mod_rewite is installed;
  return apply_filters('got_rewrite', $got_rewrite);
}