WordPress Guides and Stuff

The issue of being unable to delete old posts or pages appears to have been getting better and few are still having problems with it, so hopefully you’re not one of them. Nevertheless, if you have problems, cross your fingers because this problem can be difficult to narrow down.

It tends to be, most commonly, that these problems stem from bad plugins or themes. If you have a problem being able to delete posts or pages on your site, start by deactivating all of the plugins. Afterwards, if you still have problems, switch your theme to the twentyten theme. See: Change WordPress Theme in PHPMyAdmin

If these changes fix it, then turn your plugins back on and deactivate them one by one until you find the plugin(s) or theme which is causing the problem.

If you are making changes to your WordPress site but not seeing them online, there are several things which could be causing it and which ought to be looked into.

First, and foremost, simply try clearing your browser’s cache. See: Clear Cache For Your Specific Browser

If you don’t want to clear your cache just yet, you can try a force-refresh first.

To do a force-refresh in FireFox simply hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys, then press the R key. In Internet Explorer, hod down the Shift key while clicking the Refresh button. If you are using another browser, try these same two combinations as they often work in other browsers as well.

You can also try testing your site from a proxy site such as ninjaproxy.com, and load your page from there. Proxy sites show you what an un-cached version of your site looks like to other people.

If the problem persists, check to see if you have any caching plugins of your own such as wp-super-cache etc. If you do, any of these plugins could be causing the problem. If you don’t have a caching problem, it still could be a plugin problem. For fixing plugin problems see: http://wordpress.shadowlantern.com/2010/10/fixing-wordpress-plugin-problems/

Most caching plugins have the built-in ability to delete their caches. Try the built-in tools first. If it doesn’t work, rename the caching plugin from within the plugins directory and also rename any/all cache-related files in the wp-content directory.

If you still have problems, make sure you are on the latest version of WordPress. Also make sure the time stamp on your post and the expected time stamp in Settings > General are matching. Take daylight savings time into consideration if you have daylight savings in your area.

Sometimes your site starts having problems and you know it is a plugin causing it. Other times it starts having problems and, since you haven’t changed anything, or maybe you even did change something, just just don’t know what is causing it.

Plugins are the single most common culprit.

The first thing to check is to simply make sure your plugin is up to date with the latest version available and is compatible with the version of WordPress you are running. You can always lookup your plugin at the plugins directory to learn more, or check the plugin author’s page.

If you aren’t sure if it is a plugin affecting things, use any FTP program or your host’s provided tools, to access your file system and go into wp-content, then rename your plugins folder. This will automatically deactivate all plugins(with some rare exceptions). You can then check out your site and find out if the problem is fixed or is still occurring.

*Note that some plugins store files directly in the wp-content directory, wp-super cache is one of these plugins. If you have a cache plugin, make sure to rename all the cache-related files in wp-content as well, or else you may just end up seeing the same cached page.

If renaming the plugins folder fixes the issue for you, you will then need to rename it back, and go through your plugins one by one, testing to see which plugin(s) are causing the problems. Once you know, you can try deleting and reinstalling the plugin from scratch. If that doesn’t fix it, make sure the plugin is up to date. If that doesn’t fix it, you will need to either go without that plugin or look for a suitable replacement plugin in the plugins directory.

If you really like your current plugin, you will want to go to the plugin author’s page and offer your experiences in a comment to the author. Perhaps the author will already be aware of the issues, or will be able to look into it, and let you know how to fix it.

Upgrading WordPress is a common cause for plugins failing, as plugins were made for certain versions of WordPress and are not always immediately compatible with the latest versions.

Before you install a plugin, it is a good idea to visit the plugin author’s site and make sure there are no special requirements for uninstalling that plugin. Sometimes just simply removing a plugin isn’t enough to properly uninstall it.

If you changed your theme to add code for the plugin, that code will likely also need to be removed.

Finally, if problems have become so bad that you simply cannot get things to work, perhaps you have a corrupted database etc., you may need to simply restore from that backup which you most certainly have since you are surely following all the backup recommendations offered all over the WordPress Forums and other places, right?

If you need to setup automated backups, see: http://wordpress.shadowlantern.com/2010/09/how-to-automatically-backup-your-wordpress-database/

If you have suggestions or if there is something important I missed, let me know!

A quick gander of the WordPress forums will easily show that there are many people who wish they had a backup of their database but did not.

How to schedule database backups is discussed here.

Another problem, however, is the size of the database backups. Making sure to have a few separately-dated backups to revert to in case of a problem is recommended, but sometimes the databases are so large, that is not easy to do.

Many plugins store a bunch of data in your database and increase the size of your database. Plugins which gather and collect data, statistics, external information, etc., or plugins that block spam can be especially problematic in adding a lot of unnecessary data to your database.

For this reason, among many others, be very careful of plugins. Try to avoid them whenever possible and, if you must get by with a plugin, be sure to pick ones that are as small as possible and are proven compatible and affective with the latest versions of WordPress.

If you have problems with database size, it may be best to backup your database manually. In PHPMyAdmin, you have the option to select which tables will, or will not be backed up. Ignore the extra plugin tables which are not needed. Only include those tables that are important to your blog’s data in your backup file.

Generally image files are not stored within the database, but if they are, it would be best to remove them. Extra content like this within the database can add a great deal of unnecessary space to your database size.

Be sure to repair and optimize your database too. It will help get rid of overhead and speed up your database. See: http://helpdesk.bluehost.com/index.php/kb/article/000496

This usually comes about because of missing, or extra characters within files. Generally this can be caused from problems during installation or upgrades on the WordPress software itself, or on a theme, or on a plugin.

The first thing to try in an attempt to fix this would be to rename your plugins folder. It can be found in the wp-content folder at the root of your WordPress installation.

The next thing to try is to re-upload all of the core WordPress files. Basically you would download, from wordpress.org, the same version of WordPress that your site is currently running. You then upload/replace all of your default WordPress files with the files from the backup. Do *not* replace the wp-content folder itself.

If the problem persists, you will also want to try changing your theme as shown here: http://wordpress.shadowlantern.com/2009/11/change-wordpress-theme-in-phpmyadmin/ … Or you can try re-installing your current theme by re-downloading the theme and re-uploading it again.

Note: If you already have the WordPress software or theme handy on your computer, do not simply re-upload them. Go and download it anew first, and then re-upload the new downloaded version. Some of the problems which can cause this error may have occurred when you first tried to download the files.

Another, increasingly less-common, problem is blank spaces before or after the opening <?php and closing ?> php tags. Check the files listed in the error you receive, and also check your index and wp-config.php files for these problems. Open the file in any text editor which does not insert secret characters (Do not use Microsoft Word as it throws in hidden characters you cannot see), notepad is a good option if you’re on a Windows Machine. Text Edit works well for a Mac. Remove all the extra blank spaces before or after those opening <?php and closing ?> php tags.