We suspected the plugins, but the missing piece was `.htaccess`

Situation

After plugin updates, many WordPress failures naturally look like compatibility regressions, and rolling packages back is an easy first reaction. In this case the symptoms were tied to URL handling and rewrites, and they did not fit the behaviour of any one updated plugin particularly well.

Approach

I traced the request before it reached the application as well: Apache modules, DocumentRoot, rewrite permissions and the project's `.htaccess` file. That exposed the real problem — the expected rules file was absent from the environment. I restored the required configuration first and only then revalidated the plugin updates.

Outcome

Routing recovered without rolling back plugin versions that were actually good. `.htaccess` became part of the versioned and verifiable environment instead of remaining a one-server manual fix.