link categories and post categories dissappeared

Have you tried:

– checking through Troubleshooting WordPress 3.1 – Master List

– deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).

– switching to the Twenty Ten theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.

– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.

Thank you for the reply, I had not tried those suggestions. I basically thought I was screwed then I came across a plugin called “Assign Missing Categories”. I d/l’ed it and ran it on my site. Then I checked my home page and all my posts were missing. I about had a heart attack. I refreshed my browser and they came back – with the missing categories assigned to them!! ??

I went into my categories page, and it too took me to a blank screen. Refreshing it showed all my categories were back! Then I checked my link categories page and the same thing happened as well. Everything was restored and I am so relieved. Yesterday was a very frustrating day but by the end of the evening it turned out right. ??

The various WordPress forums have been distinctly vacuous with respect to resolving the problem of missing or invisible links categories on the blog site. It has nothing to do with coding or modifying .php files either. It just that WordPress has inadequate documentation about the relationship of widgets to this problem…that’s right! The solution lies in the widgets setup page. If you do not SEE, say, ‘blogroll’ on your page, it’s because you haven’t yet dragged ‘Categories’ (which includes ‘blogroll’ as a subset) to your “primary widget area”. Be careful about what switches you set for descriptions displayed or you may get undesirable results too.

All in all, this has been an unnecessarily time consuming, non-intuitive, frustrating experience. The forums didn’t address the issue squarely, the documentation sucked, and the layout of the WordPress options and jargon made it extremely obscure. Though powerful, this product could be made much more user friendly.

If you do not SEE, say, ‘blogroll’ on your page, it’s because you haven’t yet dragged ‘Categories’ (which includes ‘blogroll’ as a subset) to your “primary widget area”.

Uh? The Categories Widget has nothing to do with your external links (blogroll). Try using The Links widget if you want to display your links.