Plugin conflict or maybe a bug?

This is now happening (or happened) in 2 other sites where this plugin was installed.
After removing/commenting out the code, the pages loaded fine with no issues.

Hey Praveen,

as suggested in the email, let’s continue the conversation here.

Would you be so kind and let me know the following:
1. your WP theme and version
2. our plugin version
3. where exactly in the code are you putting the <?php zemanta_related_posts()?> ?
4. would it be possible to give me a link to your blog and also see the issue live – one post with the missing sidebar and the other that is not missing the sidebar?
5. have you tried not inserting the <?php zemanta_related_posts()?> and do the automatic posts show up normally then (not breaking the sidebars,..)?
6. what other plugins do you have installed (has our plugin worked with the <?php zemanta_related_posts()?> inserted correctly, and stopped after an update or have you installed any new plugins recently)?

Any additional information would help a lot.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Petra

Hi Petra,

Sure thing.
As needed, here are my responses to the questions above.
1. WP 4.4 with a custom theme. A member of Advanced WordPress group in FB checked out the code for single.php and there are no issues with the theme coding.
2. Plugin version is 1.13
3. The code is added to single.php.
4. Would it be ok if i share the source code? Because as it is a live site, these “broken” pages are sending a 500 header to Google search bots.
I have been seeing these 500 error pages for sometime but i did not think much about it. But when i started seeing them regularly, i decided to investigate and that’s when i found the issue.
Alternatively, i can share a username/password using which you can check it on the live site (i can enable the related posts only for this id).
5. Yes. When i do the automatic insert the full content does not show up. If it is via the insert and since i am inserting it after the content, the content at-least shows up.
6. No. I have not installed any new plugins.
The plugin has been working fine for over a year with the code insert. It’s only after upgrading to WP 4.3 (i am not sure of the exact number but i started seeing this only in the last 2-3 months so 4.3 is more of a guess) these errors started appearing.
Initially i thought it must be a caching issue but when Google Webmaster Tools started showing 500 error for these pages, i decided something must be amiss. So i cleared the cache manually but with no success.
On 2 separate occasions, i copied the contents of these broken posts, deleted the old post and published them again. But they were still broken.

On an average this site publishes 3 to 5 new posts a day. And it’s only 1 post that has this issue. The remaining 2 or 4 posts are good with no issues.

I have the following plugins installed
Adpushup, Bloom, Breadcrumbs NavXT, Contact Form 7, Custom Permalinks, Disable Emojis, Editor FontSize, Google XML Sitemaps, Imagify, iThemes Security, Jetpack, Limit Login Attempts, MailPoet Newsletter, P3, Plugin Organizer, Recent Posts Widget Extended, Redirection, Rel Nofollow Checkbox, SEO Ultimate, Structured Social Profiles, Visual Biography Editor, Widget Logic, WordPress Popular Posts, WP Notification Bar Pro, WP Rocket, WP-Mobilizer, WP Optimize, WP SpamShield, WPCustom Category Image, Yet Another Stars Rating.

Additional Information:
a) For the posts that are broken, the related posts in the compose screen is also blank. It’s as if there are no related posts.
b) The site has over 10k posts so there must be something to show.
c) I have this plugin installed on 3-4 other websites with the same server configuration and more or less the same set of plugins. And the plugin is working fine.
However the difference is this particular site is huge in terms of posts. The other sites have less than 1000 posts whereas this one over 10k posts all the way from 2007.
Server logs do not show any error nor is there any error log being generated.

Good Morning and Happy New Year.

Any updates on this issue?

Bump.

Hi Praveen,

really sorry for this unintentional silent treatment.

I wasn’t able to reproduce the issue on my side and I have mentioned your issue to a colleague, who is trying out a couple of things. Sadly, we do not have a blog with a 10k articles or similar on our hand and the problem could be related to such big database. But still, highly unlikely – and the same is with your other plugins installed, nothing stands out (maybe the Redirection plugin, but worked when tested on our side – and also as you have more or less the same plugins installed, the odd plugin would be noticed).

So, if you could share a username/password as suggested (using which you can check it on the live site (i can enable the related posts only for this id).) that would be more than helpful – just send the credentials to the support[at]zemanta[dot]com. We could look at the issue on Saturday, 23th of January, if that is OK with you?

Once again, really sorry for such delayed response!

Looking forward to your reply,
Petra

Hi Petra,

Apologies for this delay. Got caught up with work.
I have emailed you the access details to support[at]zemanta[dot]com.
Related posts by Zemanta plugin is now showing only for the id that i have shared and is disabled for others.
Have shared a sample url as well for reference.

Hoping for a quick fix to this issue.

Regards
Praveen