Can’t save changes in Settings, theme screwed up

  • 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… ??

    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. ??

    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.

    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.

    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!

    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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