Sometimes technology sucks…

…the very life blood out of those it promises to help!

I had to post this “rant” and “lesson learned” so maybe I can help someone else not waste 8 hours of head-splitting troubleshooting over some frustrating software problem. I won’t get into gads of details but suffice it to say I had upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress 2.6 and added a new theme ( a revision to the Amazing Grace theme by Vladimir Prelovac).

Day 1 - I liked the way the ‘ol blog was shaping up, and it looked like the upgrade to the new Wordpress revision went smoothly. Or so it seemed…

Until I realized that the latest post to the blog listed “Comments Off.” Hmmm, that’s odd. I could’ve sworn that comments were turned “on” in the “Settings>Discussion” area of the WordPress control panel. Upon a doublecheck, I confirmed that yes Comments were “on.” So what could it be?

Well, my first action was to go to Google and search for this particular problem - Comments “off” when I needed them (and they were supposed to be) “on.” After a few minutes of trying out a few different search terms I discovered that you could override Comments settings for individual posts. I would find that in the Advanced settings of the “Write” or “Manage” sections. Interesting…

So I go to the “Manage” section and click on the post I want to edit…but I don’t see any Advanced settings that say anything about Comments. After spending a minute or so trying to find whether it was somehow hidden or not obvious, I go to “Write.” Sure enough, nothing there either.

Okay, so next I think, maybe it’s the theme that’s wreaking havoc with my Comments. So I click on the link to the Theme (which is typically at the bottom of your template), and go snooping around the site for anything mentioning bugs regarding Comments. I spend 20 minutes there, then go back to good ‘ol Google to search for known bugs of that particular theme. And find nothing…just all kinds of praises for this beautifully designed, streamlined theme. Okay, back to the theme website…uh oh…the site is down…with an error message indicating that there are database issues…By the looks of this, I think maybe there is a problem with the theme. So I wait…and I wait for the website to come online again.

And while I wait (and periodically check on the availability of the Theme website), I search Google again and find a post on the WordPress forum from two people who recently had the same problem as I had. But, alas, their posts had no replies from WordPress or any other posters who had figured out the solution to this problem. Okay, let me try one more check on the Theme site…still down…then frustration settles in, and I call it a night, poured myself a glass of wine, and started making dinner for my “starving” son.

Day 2 - After a short night of tossing, turning, and subconsciously trying to troubleshoot my software problem, I get up and take care of my email, watch a few videos from a training program I’m taking, then take the dog out for his walk. While walking the dog, I decide on my plan of action for my blog “commenting” issue. Suddenly, it becomes clear. I’ll just do a fresh install. My gut was telling me that the WordPress upgrade was the source of the issue. Besides, over the past couple years I had been getting some error messages every time I added a new post to my blog. I lived with it because it didn’t seem to cause any real problem except for the brief annoyance error messages have a knack of causing.

So back to Wordpress. I reviewed the “5 Minute Easy Installation”…Looked good and my installation would be even easier because I had cPanel with Fantastico, which automatically installed the software with a click of a button. Unfortunately, after this quick and easy installation, the new blog was the “bare bones” theme with none of the plugins that I had before or the new theme that I had added. No problem, I would add those back in. But before I do that I wanted to check out the “Write” and “Manage” sections to see if they looked any different than my old blog. Sure enough, there was a whole slew of Advanced settings, plain as day, that I hadn’t seen in my old blog. Okay, now we were getting somewhere!

So the next thing I do is to add in all the plugins that I used. Easy enough…just replace the new Plugin folder with my old Plugin folder. After that was done, I go back to my old blog and copy and paste the appropriate settings needed for the plugins in the new blog. No problem-o there. Now to add the new theme. But before I do that, I go back to the “Write” section just to make sure that I can still post an article with no problems.

But wait! What’s this? When I go to “Write,” I’m now missing the whole Advanced editing section. It was there just a few minutes ago… I start feeling a welling up of emotions…anxiety, confusion, maybe even a little panic….NOOOOO! This can’t be happening! And as quick as those emotions set in, they were gone, and replaced with something else. Something much better…CLARITY!

…aaaahhhhhhh!…It’s the economy stupid!…no, wrong rant…I mean…It’s a plugin, stupid! Of course, what had I just done? I had just added plugins to my new blog! My blog worked well before, then I added plugins, then it didn’t work. Even though all the plugins were (supposedly) updated for this new version of WordPress, one plugin (or maybe more) was causing a conflict and “breaking” my WordPress blog. Why hadn’t I thought of that before wasting hours upon hours trying to hunt down the solution to my Comments problem? I knew about the problems that conflicting plugins can have. But I don’t do these upgrades all the time…and just forgot.

So I did what I needed to do…deactivate all the plugins and activate them one by one until I found the culprit, which ended up being a plugin called WordPress Email Notification Plugin. Problem solved! And guess what? An added bonus, remember that annoying error message that appeared every time I created a new post…gone…along with the plugin that was causing the error.

Moral of the story - Although plugins can have a tremendous boost to the overall interest and interactivity of your WordPress blog, they can also be a source of problems, particularly when you’re upgrading to new versions of the software. Make sure you update all plugins when notified (usually by a message in your Plugin section), and if you experience any issues with a WordPress upgrade, don’t forget about checking for possible plugin conflicts…first.

btw - the theme and the WordPress version were absolutely issue-free. It’s the plugin, stupid!

Now if only I can remember that in my next Wordpress upgrade

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Tags: installation, plugins, problems, technology, themes, wordpress