switched to Multisite, now all Blocks have vanished!

Hi, the plugin has not been tested with Multisite so I can’t confirm it is Multisite compatible. Previous support threads suggest it is not but the existing blocks shouldn’t have vanished. They are stored (in the latest version) in the options table. If you have access to the database, search in the option_name field of the options table for %gcb%. If it finds some rows then the content is still there but I’m afraid I can’t suggest how to get it back without returning to a standalone installation ??

I’ve got a table called mywpdbname_gcb that appears to contain my missing blocks. the table _options also appears to contain my blocks, but they do not appear in the dashboard plugin admin area at all.

EDIT: I created a new block, and it does show up in the plugin admin area now, and its shortcode shows up fine on a page. However my old blocks are still not showing up in the plugin admin area.

Hello & thank you for a fast reply, by the way!

Looks like you weren’t using the latest version of the plugin as the latest update moved the content blocks into the options table. But at least the content is there. Unfortunately there isn’t much you can do without reverting to a standalone site.

I checked both _gcb and _options, and my new block showed up only in _options. The _gcb is probably unused with the most recent plugin versions and therefore safe to remove, yes?

When the last version was updated it should have moved ALL the old blocks to the options table and removed the old gcb table. So if your old blocks are still in gcb and the new one in options it sounds like something didn’t work correctly. Probably best not to remove the old table if the blocks are not in the new table or you might lose them.

Well that was interesting. My second test block happened to be assigned the same option_name as one of the old blocks (gcb_2, if it matters) and it overwrote the old block without any warning or error. I’m going to try to manually recover the existing blocks before touching anything else on the plugin’s dashboard pages. I will let you know if any other interesting errors occur.

Thank you very much for your help! I would not have known where to look to even begin recovering all the old blocks. Manually recovering them will take time, but I would not have had any chance whatsoever of remembering what they all were if I would have had to recreate them from scratch.

OK, I will keep the old table for now. I am all in favor of not losing data! GCB is running some pretty business-critical stuff on our site, so I would like to make sure it is running as cleanly as possible. Is the the sort of situation where uninstall/reinstalling the plugin is likely to help, or to cause more problems?

Not sure Lydia. bear in mind that the plugin is NOT Multisite compatible so don’t expect it to work…

I’m told by my developer that the latest version of the plugin should be Multisite compatible as it uses the Options table rather than its old table but that if you upgraded the plugin after converting to Multisite it may not have worked. However, if you can do an export of the old gcb table and send it to [email protected] he can create an import file that you should then be able to import the old blocks. There may be a small charge to cover his time.

My developer has run a test on Multisite using the old version 1.5.7. He enabled Multisite and then the blocks were visible only in the original site which is what we would expect. He updated the plugin and the blocks were still visible only in the original site. Basically, the seconds and any subsequent sites start with no blocks but he exporting the blocks from the first site and importing into the second and that worked.

Not sure why this didn’t happen for you?