The original poster, platax, is having trouble modifying a category on their forum, receiving a “page does not exist or is private” error message despite being the owner and admin. JammyDodger and Benjamin_D suggest that the issue may be due to the category name or description containing non-ASCII characters, specifically French accents.
Benjamin_D points out that the “slug generation method” parameter should be set to “encoded” to resolve this issue. platax confirms that changing this setting from ASCII to encoded resolves the problem.
MarkDoerr notes that this issue appears to be fixed in the latest beta version (2.8.0.beta9), as they were able to create and edit a category with accented characters without issues. Benjamin_D explains that the fix for this issue was merged on January 12, 2021, and that there have been two security releases for the stable branch since the version platax is running (2.7.9).
Hello,
this is pretty awkward : I created 3 categories on my brand new forum, and when I want to configure one of them (the 2 others are OK), I get message “this page does not exist or is private” (although I’m the owner AND admin)
What have I done wrong ? (beginner’s mistake I guess)
It could be the category name you picked. Someone had an issue with Finnish letters in this recent topic, and this was suggested as a solution:
I may have a hint : when I’m on the category page, the french accent “é” is twice in the url : I guess this might be part of the trouble when I click on “modify” (which brings straight to 404 error)
Exactly, though it’s more category description in my case.
I don’t really understand the solution you quoted but I’ll do my best…
Yes, I had that issue too,
what do you have for the slug generation method parameter ?
that could help: Administrative Bulk Operations
Thanks, though I’m hosted, so ssh is not an easy option for me.
Where is the slug generation method to be find? My guess would have been somewhere in parameters…
EDIT: I guess this is it: /c/toute-personne-intéressée-par-nos-activitées/5
That’s okay, if you’re not familiar with the console yet there’s no rush. You can always change the visibility of this one to ‘staff’, and come back and tidy it up later.
I’ve just tested it, and having a category called eg. ‘Tést’ is fine, as long as you don’t include the é in the slug (so let discourse generate the slug for you).
Edit: But @Benjamin_D has the actual answer below. 
Indeed https://your.domain/admin/site_settings/category/all_results?filter=slug%20generation, it should be set to encoded
This is sounding like a bug. It shouldn’t be possible to set the category such that you can’t edit it.
If the problem is the slug, then you should be able to replace the slug with a -, so /c/-/8 (where 8 is the category ID) should work.
OK, though I can’t change anything about this category for now. What’s more, my category name has no accent inside, it seems to be bugged by the description for some reason
It was ASCII, I changed it to encoded, IT WORKED ! I can now do whatever I have to !
Many thanks to both of you ! 
Indeed
I do agree, I don’t know if this comes from a mistake from my host, or if there is something in the version that is not fixed yet. I have to admit that this version is supposed to be upgraded according to a warning message on admin page (though I can-t do it myself) : my host is running 2.7.9 when last is 2.8.0.beta9
I just tested creating and editing a Category name with accented characters on a new install and it worked fine. I didn’t have to edit the slug manually so it looks like the newest version (2.8.0.beta9) fixed this.
– EDIT –
Interestingly…I didn’t change the slug setting from ascii to encoded as @Benjamin_D mentioned earlier in the thread. It just worked out of the box.
as @MarkDoerr points out, the PR that solved the issue was merged on 12 Jan 21, where 2.7.9 stable was released Oct 20.
There have been two security releases for the stable branch since.
