Where are draft posts coming from?

  • I’m seeing over 70 “draft posts” that were created since I began maintaining a website at the end of November 2011, and I have NO IDEA where they’re coming from, how or why they’re being created, or how to make them stop. Virtually all of them are empty (no text in them) and many have the same title, some with variations in upper/lower case and others completely different titles. Weird, weird, weird.

    When I started this job I knew very little about WordPress (but a lot about HTML/CSS and a bit about PHP and other CMS systems). It’s possible I triggered something into spewing out these things without realizing. But I didn’t even do anything with posts at all (just pages) for at least a couple of months after I started, and these things go back to last November. Many of them are also saying they were created by a user whose account hasn’t been used since last December.

    It’s creepy, weird and infuriating to see these things. I feel like I’m in that cartoon scene from “the Sorcerer’s Apprentice” or something. LOL Can anyone help me figure out what is causing these and how to make them stop? Just let me know what other information you need me to provide (e.g. plugins, etc). Since this is the website of a large public institution, I’d prefer not to post a link.

    Many thanks in advance for the help. ??

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • Many of them are also saying they were created by a user whose account hasn’t been used since last December.

    Do you know this user personally?

    Thread Starter pegasus1112

    (@pegasus1112)

    It’s the person who used to be in my position but I don’t believe she left under bad circumstances (on the contrary).

    In that case, I would delete all of those posts and remove that user. Then monitor the site to see if any further “empty” posts appear.

    Thread Starter pegasus1112

    (@pegasus1112)

    Thank you for your replies and your suggestion, Esmi. Unfortunately these are not coming only from that one account. They’re also being generated by my own account, and yet I am not creating them. My account and the previous person’s account are the only accounts supposedly creating these draft posts. There’s even one (actually several) supposedly created today.

    I saw something in a search about auto-save and how it can sometimes cause problems, but couldn’t figure out where the setting could be found to change it. But I don’t know if this is related or not.

    Here’s another idea that maybe you can confirm or not. I tend to keep several tabs open so that I can find the pages I’m working on easily. Often I’ll get a message saying that a version has already been saved from a previous session (or something to that effect). Could this be related to these draft posts? This would have to be related to *pages* thought, not necessarily posts. Could this be related to the problem, do you think?

    Post revisions would not show up as new, empty posts. Site url?

    Thread Starter pegasus1112

    (@pegasus1112)

    As I said, I would prefer not to post the URL. I can send it to you confidentially via private email. Shall I contact you through one of the sites in your profile?

    Shall I contact you through one of the sites in your profile?

    By all means. In the meantime, can you inspect your wp_users table in your database? I’d like to establish that it does only contain two records.

    OK – got your site url. The main reason I wanted it was to run a couple of scans on the site in case it had been hacked. The good news is that the scans were clear but the bad news is that these results still do not rule out a hack.

    Any news on the wp_users database table?

    Thread Starter pegasus1112

    (@pegasus1112)

    Thanks very much for your help. I’m writing an email to my tech person, although I wouldn’t expect a reply until at least next week. If I find out anything I’ll post back though.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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