Permalink goes to 404 page

Question

I have a loop which I use to display posts from news category and If I click either on the title, thumbnail and read more, it should be able to direct me to the relative post.

My loop looks like this:

<?php
    $args = array(
        'post_type' => 'post',
        'posts_per_page' => 3,
        'category_name' => 'news'
    );
    $query = new WP_Query($args);
    while($query->have_posts()) : $query->the_post();
?>  
    <div class="news_box_content">
        <h5><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h5>
        <figure><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?></a></figure>
        <?php if($post->post_excerpt) { ?>
            <p><?php echo substr(get_the_excerpt(), 0,300); ?></p>
            <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Read more...</a>
        <?php } else {
            echo get_excerpt(); 
        } ?>
    </div>
<?php endwhile; wp_reset_postdata(); ?>

All works fine except on the read more link.

Problem is that when I click on read more, It leads me to the 404 page instead of the post content.

How can I solve that?

Answer 1

<?php if( get_the_excerpt() ) { ?>
            <p><?php echo substr(get_the_excerpt(), 0,300); ?></p>
            <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Read more...</a>
        <?php } else {
            echo get_excerpt(); 
        } ?>

try this

Answer 2

I just realised that the theme functions.php has a function to get the excerpt and there a permalink was being added:

function get_excerpt(){
    $excerpt = get_the_content();
    $excerpt = preg_replace(" ([.*?])",'',$excerpt);
    $excerpt = strip_shortcodes($excerpt);
    $excerpt = strip_tags($excerpt);
    $excerpt = substr($excerpt, 0, 145);
    $excerpt = substr($excerpt, 0, strripos($excerpt, " "));
    $excerpt = $excerpt.'<a class="more-link" href="<?php the_permalink();?>">Read more</a>';
    return $excerpt;
}

I removed the line where the a tag is added, and instead I edited the my loop to this:

<?php if($post->post_excerpt) { ?>
    <p><?php echo substr(get_the_excerpt(), 0,300); ?></p>
    <a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>">Read more...</a>
<?php } else { ?>
    <?php echo get_excerpt(); ?>
    <a class="more-link" href="<?php the_permalink();?>">Read more</a>

<?php } ?>