Can’t save changes in Settings, theme screwed up

  • greatestates

    (@greatestates)


    16 years ago

    I’m having major problems with my blog https://creativist communications.com. It started when I was unable to add javascript to the sidebars – I never got an error, but the banners I was trying to install never would appear.

    I changed the theme hoping it would be more java-friendly, but things are even worse. The pages tabs across the top don’t display properly, and when I ran validate on it got the message that it was unable to validate my site. These were the 2 reasons it gave:

    Rare or unregistered character encoding detected
    The character encoding declared for this document (utf-7) is supported by the validator, but may not be widely supported across platforms. For the sake of interoperability, it is best to use a unicode character encoding such as UTF-8 …

    and

    Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because on line 107 it contained one or more bytes that I cannot interpret as utf-7 (in other words, the bytes found are not valid values in the specified Character Encoding). Please check both the content of the file and the character encoding indication.
    The error was: UTF-16BE:Malformed LO surrogate dab5

    I figured it was a timestamp error so I went into my settings, changed my default to UTF-8 from the drop-down menu and hit Save. I got an error saying that saving my changes had failed, but no reason or error code was given. I also can’t make any changes in the Design mode – edits to my files there get the same failure message.

    So basically my site is trashed for the time being and I really need to clean it up and get it running again.

    Can anyone please help me? I’m not a techie, so please explain in simple terms! I would appreciate it very much!

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 22 total)
  • Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    can someone please help?? this is starting to ruin my life… ??

    iridiax

    (@iridiax)

    Either the add this plugin is adding non-English (Chinese?) characters or you have been hacked. You have a bad script that I had to force quit upon page load, so hacking is a real possibility.

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    Thanks. I get that bad script too but didn’t know what it meant – every once in a while a site will give me that error. How do I deal with this? Do I contact my webhost, so they will deal with it? I’ve never had this happen before. ??

    iridiax

    (@iridiax)

    Disable the add this plugin (or any other similar plugin) and see if you can identify the bad script. I viewed browser source for your page and I spotted the Chinese? characters.

    whooami

    (@whooami)

    are you sure you werent seeing this?

    https://creativistcommunications.com/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.js?ver=1.2.6

    thats the file that caused the load problem for me. and thats the way it ought to look. I also didnt see any Chinese in thee view source – is that where you saw it iridiax?

    You still need to upgrade, btw.

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    I checked with my host site and they don’t think the site’s been hacked. They said it looks like a problem with the Bad Behavior plugin, so I disabled that. Still got the script error and still can’t make change to any settings or edit any of the code pages.

    Just what do I need to upgrade??

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    I also disabled the Add this plugin.

    iridiax

    (@iridiax)

    I also didnt see any Chinese in thee view source – is that where you saw it iridiax?

    Yes, the Chinese was in the addthis generated code.

    Just what do I need to upgrade??

    WordPress and your plugins.

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    will do. thanks!

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    Well, I updated WP, and updated any plugins that had them. My web host tech guy thought it was a plugin conflict, so he suggested I deactivate all the plugins, see if it worked, and then start adding them back in.

    Problem is, WP won’t let me deactivate the plugins. I get a message that says “Are you sure you want to do this?” and “Please try again.” Same deal when I tried to change my time zone, it would not save my change. In other words, I have no admin control over this site.

    Any ideas?

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    I also tried to change the theme, in case this was the problem since it worked fine until I installed it. But it won’t let me. The message says my theme change failed.

    HELP!! :/

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    OK, I got it to accept the default WP theme. However, I still have no admin control to deactivate plugins, change settings, or edit files. Waaaaah!

    iridiax

    (@iridiax)

    You can deactivate plugins by using ftp to delete them from your plugins folder.

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    Still nothing. I deleted every single plugin, I’m using the default theme, and I still can’t do any admin functions. I just get the WP Failure Notice Your attempt to edit your settings has failed.

    Thread Starter greatestates

    (@greatestates)

    someone – anyone – can you please please help me? Or tell me where I can find help? I really need to get this site back in my control again! Thanks.

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 22 total)
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