Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › site reverting back and losing updates
- This topic has 10 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 10 years, 9 months ago by Tracy.
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June 15, 2013 at 8:21 am #46080TracyMember
I've been working on a site for a couple months now using the Agency Theme. A couple times now the owner has contacted me about latest added information disappearing! It seems the site has reverted back a couple weeks by itself. This is very frustrating. Any idea why that would happen.
http://www.daveyderby.caJune 15, 2013 at 11:09 am #46110[email protected]MemberHere is one possibility:
If you are doing development from more than one site, you can run in to problems. If you leave any files open on one development site, open those same files and edit them on a second development site and save them, and then go back to those open files at the first development site and do a save- the changes made at the second site will be overwritten by the old files at the first development site. (This for sure happens with editors like CODA and probably with Dreamweaver etc.)
If a wordpress item is open on one development computer and another computer modifies and saves that item- when the first development computer gets back to the item - wordpress will probably prompt the user to save the auto back-up of the file- overwriting the changes made on the second computer.
My personal practice and my suggestion- before you leave any development computer save your files and close. If you ever come back to a development computer and there are files open, close them without saving them and then reopen them --- unless you are sure that they have not been modified elsewhere.
June 18, 2013 at 9:08 am #46535TracyMemberThankyou for you suggestions. I am aware that your suggestions can cause these issues but I am sure this was or is not the case. The site will be fine for days and then things dissapear. It just happened last night mysteriously again. 9 of my 11 pages in the sidebar menu are gone. This time, thankfully the pages are still there but gone from the menu. So I went into the menus to re ad them and they have been (Pending) now for at least 20minutes.
When I first went into the menus, the bars were
there with what should be the pages but they were half the size
horizontally. I was able to click them open but they did not contain
anything. Can anybody help me with this issue.June 18, 2013 at 11:43 am #46579Bill MurrayMemberMy initial reaction is that this is either a) a caching issue or b) a problem with your host.
On a quick look, it doesn't appear that you are using any caching plugins, but are you using any object caches (eg, APC or memcached)? Problems with object caches can produce the problems you are describing. If you are using any caching, disable it and see what happens. Check with your host and see if they have installed any caching that you might not be aware of.
Next, keep in mind that WP stores its data in a database. If you can access the DB directly (such as through PHPMyAdmin) and you know your way around the WP DB structure, you could see if the data that is missing on the frontend of your site is still present in the DB. If it has gone missing from the DB, your host might be having MySQL problems and not telling you, or your host might be restoring old copies of the DB without telling you. Another possibility is that your host is having DB problems but is unaware of them because they might be affecting a limited number of customers.
Your best bet is to have a conversation with your host. In a normal hosting situation, WP won't mysteriously drop your data in the way you have described.
Web: https://wpperform.com or Twitter: @wpperform
We do managed WordPress hosting.
June 18, 2013 at 2:20 pm #46612TracyMemberThankyou, so I just got off the phone with the web host. In not so many words he told me that they don't use any caching and basically couldn't explain why this was happening.
I have very minimal plugins installed and none have anything to do with caching.
Like I said earlier I didn't actually lose any pages this time just the links in the sidebar. I had used the custom menu widget to present these page links originally but this morning they wouldn't add to the menu again they just kept saying (Pending) so I use the WP pages widget instead. That is how I got the links back this time.
Could this be a problem with the custom menu widget itself?
Also, my gallery images went missing from the site this morning too. It is just the gallery plugin I was using. Could there be a problem with that plugin? Could there be compatibility issues throughout?
June 18, 2013 at 2:33 pm #46616Bill MurrayMemberIt's not likely a problem with the custom menu widget.
Have you checked your user role on the site? Is it administrator?
What gallery plugin were you using?
Who is your host?
Another possible problem is that the index on your postmeta table is damaged or corrupt. You can repair the table using PHPMyAdmin (your host should be able to help you with that if you don't know how to do it). If your postmeta table is non-existent, damaged, or corrupt, you'll see the pending status when you attempt to add new menu items.
Web: https://wpperform.com or Twitter: @wpperform
We do managed WordPress hosting.
June 20, 2013 at 3:43 pm #46940TracyMemberproblems, problems, problems. I've had just about enough of this. The host is webcentre.ca. I've been on the phone allot and yesterday they said they repaired something to do with the postmeta table as was suggested. This did nothing at all. Now I've had all kinds of trouble. this morning I deactivated all of my plugins so I could reactivate them individually to see if any of them were giving me the problems. I cannot activate now, and some of them I can't even delete through the dashboard. I've deleted and reinstalled through filezilla which also did not work. At times all of the widgets that I had placed in the sidebar went away as well until I logged out then back in again, they eventually came back. I am using the Agency child theme, so now the genesis responsive slider no longer works.
Then I phoned the host again this afternoon and while on the phone he did a database repair of all the tables. I got off the phone and now I cannot login at all. I thought I should try the password reset but still doesn't work. I'm noticing now that my custom background is gone now as well and it has reverted back to the Agency background. What on earth do I do now?June 20, 2013 at 6:06 pm #46967Bill MurrayMemberHmmm...sounds like things are a mess and it's frustrating.
Step 1 is not to panic. Most things are fixable.
Step 2 really depends on your skill level. You may want to consider finding a WP consultant to hire to take a look at your installation. We just do managed WP hosting, so unless you want to change hosts, that's not something I do. If you do want to change hosts, we'd move you for free, and moving would likely solve your problems, and it might end up being cheaper than trying to fix your problem in the site's current server.
If you want to proceed further on your own, I'll offer some suggestions. Before doing anything, I recommend making a backup of your current WP install.
1) Make sure your WP install is complete. Download a fresh copy of WP and replace your WP folders - TAKING CARE NOT TO REPLACE YOUR \wp-content folder.
1a) Do the same with the folder containing the Genesis framework. Grab a fresh download and replace the contents on your server.
2) To check the login issue, access PHPMyAdmin and browse your users table. The user_login column should include your username, and the user_email column should include the email associated with that account. If you can't login using your password AND you have access to that email, use the password reset function. That should get you back to a functioning WP dashboard.
3) If you delete plugins, you'll lose the widgets associated with them. You can manually deactivate all plugins by renaming the plugins folder if you think a plugin is creating a conflict. However, from my first look, I don't recall you running any plugins that are likely to cause this problem.
4) You said your host repaired the postmeta table. Did they find problems with your WP database? If so, that's typically a problem they need to solve.
Web: https://wpperform.com or Twitter: @wpperform
We do managed WordPress hosting.
June 20, 2013 at 10:43 pm #46997DerekMemberI would second what Bill Murray has suggested and essentially re-install WordPress. There was a period of time where we were experiencing odd file changes on our server, and I spent months off-and-on trying to figure it out. Turns out there were still some infected files on the server from that timthumb exploit a couple of years back. Those infected files were affecting PHP files across our server (not just in the WP installs).
If you're able to change what directory on your host your domain points to, I would essentially "rebuild" the site in a new directory. Create a new database and import the tables from the current site into it. Setup a clean version of WP and Genesis in the new directory. Add new/clean versions of the plugins you were using into the plugins folder. If you don't have an offline copy of the child theme that you know is clean, you'll probably need to go through (or hire someone to go through) the child theme and ensure it is free of any bad code.
Just my two cents. It's where I would start!
Derek Rippe – CSS Artist & Genesis Fanboy @ SynaVista and MediaCairn Design Studio
Figure out your CSS problems with Firebug | Check out my Custom Comment Form Title pluginJune 21, 2013 at 3:23 am #47003TracyMemberThankyou again both of you for your help. After many hours today again I feel I am still not getting anywhere and at times went backwards! My login is successful again and my style is back again but still the same of behaviour with the menu items and the plugins. A couple of things I did notice along the way... when I again tried adding my menu item although it was a page I was adding while it was (pending) I noticed in the corner it said custom instead of page. I then tried to add a custom header to see what would happen and it sort of crashed the sidebar for awhile. (eventually it returned I think after logging out and in again)
Then focusing on my plugins most of the day to no avail I went through all your steps, backing up and re installing fresh downloads of WP and themes and the plugins themselves. Still no luck! What I have now noticed is that my themes will no longer change or activate either.
I hear you Derek about rebuilding the site in a new directory and pointing the domain to it but I think I'm out of time for that. If I was going to do that I may as well change hosts which if what I think should happen. If you have any more suggestions I appreciate anything at this point. the link... http://daveyderby.ca/June 21, 2013 at 11:58 pm #47151TracyMemberJust wanted to let you know that I continued down the road to destruction this morning trying to repair db tables until even the host support couldn't help me and lost any database connection I once had?? I truly don't know what the reason for these problems was. Anyways, I've kept it at the same host but freshly installed everything in a sub directory and built a brand new database. It all went very smoothly and I learned some things along the way. Mainly... backup all you can! I thought it would take me days to redo my pages and posts and images but I am proud of myself that somewhere along the way, I think on this forum I read about exporting all the content in the Tools tab and the Genesis theme settings. Fantastic.. it worked like a charm. thanks everyone.
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