Deactivation of Embedly on single page not actually deactivating it

Hi Tifffany,

I suggest you:

• Check the FDP notifications that you find on the top right of the FDP settings page.
  See the following picture for clarification: https://freesoul-deactivate-plugins.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/freesoul-deactivate-plugins-notifications-center.png
  In some conditions, FDP doesn’t disable any plugin to avoid serious issues. If one of those conditions were triggered you will find a notification. If you find it, please let me know what it says.
• Clear any cache. Maybe you are seeing an old cached version of the page. Or visit the page after adding a unique query argument to the URL. Let’s suppose your page is reachable at https://yoursite.com/sample-page/. Visit it at https://yoursite.com/sample-page/?sdfsdf=1. By doing this you will probably bypass the cache.
• Check if Embedly added any mu-plugin. FDP can disable standard plugins, but not mu-plugins. You can check it by going to Plugins => Installed Plugins => Must-Use.
  There you will see at least freesoul deactivate plugins [fdp] which is the mu-plugin installed by FDP. If you see another mu-plugin that looks like be installed by Embedly, then that mu-plugin can’t be deactivated by FDP.
• Go to the FDP Singles settings page. Open the action buttons bar on the row related to the page where you have issues. Then click on the question mark, and tell me what you see on the popup. See this picture for clarification: https://freesoul-deactivate-plugins.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/fdp-action-buttons.png. I mean the question mark that you see before “Current Theme”.
• Use FDP to disable a different plugin, and check if with the other plugins it works.
• If you can do it, temporarily publish the website. Save the FDP settings again, and check again to see if it works. Then you can again make the website private. This is to check if the private status of your website has somehow something to do with the issue.
  
  
  
  
  I hope it helps.
  
  Have a great day!
  Jose
  @tiffany-clark

Sorry for the delay in replying. It says here you replied 11 hours ago, but I was only notified by email a couple of hours ago for some reason, and the notification didn’t make it to my inbox, but rather appeared in “all mail.” ?? Anyway, thank you so much! ???? I will try all of this and let you know ASAP, hopefully later today. Thanks again! ????

Update: Looking into getting some help from a web developer friend this weekend. But may well still be back in touch. In any event, thanks again so much for your help! ????

Hi Tiffany,

thank you for the update. You are welcome!

Have a great day!

Jose

@tiffany-clark

Hi Jose,

So, I ended up deciding to follow your instructions before having my friend take a look. I’m still having the problem, but here’s what happened at each step you prescribed:

• Check the FDP notifications that you find on the top right of the FDP settings page.
  See the following picture for clarification:?https://freesoul-deactivate-plugins.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/freesoul-deactivate-plugins-notifications-center.png
  In some conditions, FDP doesn’t disable any plugin to avoid serious issues. If one of those conditions were triggered you will find a notification. If you find it, please let me know what it says.
  • >>>>> Done. No notifications there.
• Clear any cache. Maybe you are seeing an old cached version of the page. Or visit the page after adding a unique query argument to the URL. Let’s suppose your page is reachable at?https://yoursite.com/sample-page/. Visit it at?https://yoursite.com/sample-page/?sdfsdf=1. By doing this you will probably bypass the cache.
  • >>>>> Tried bypassing with the unique query argument you suggested. No difference. Also tried creating a new, test post to test fresh, but, even when privately published that new, test post didn’t appear on the singles > posts list…. Kind of separately odd/concerning. Do you know why that might be?
• Check if Embedly added any mu-plugin. FDP can disable standard plugins, but not mu-plugins. You can check it by going to Plugins => Installed Plugins => Must-Use.
  There you will see at least?freesoul deactivate plugins [fdp]?which is the mu-plugin installed by FDP. If you see another mu-plugin that looks like be installed by Embedly, then that mu-plugin can’t be deactivated by FDP.
  • >>>>> Doesn’t appear to be any Embedly installed mu-plugins, just htpm-mu-plugin.php (not sure what this one is but Google search suggests not Embedly) and SSO v. 4 by Garth Mortensen and Mike Hansen (I think related to my host, Bluehost).
• Go to the FDP Singles settings page. Open the action buttons bar on the row related to the page where you have issues. Then click on the question mark, and tell me what you see on the popup. See this picture for clarification:?https://freesoul-deactivate-plugins.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/fdp-action-buttons.png. I mean the question mark that you see before “Current Theme”.
  • >>>>> I see “The page was checked simulating a logged user. It was not possible to get the disabled plugins. Maybe this page redirects to another page or something went wrong.”
• Use FDP to disable a different plugin, and check if with the other plugins it works.
  • >>>>> Mixed results. Disabling the plugins “AddToAny Share Buttons” and “WP Recaptca” worked, but it appeared I could not disable “Yoast SEO” from the post.
• If you can do it, temporarily publish the website. Save the FDP settings again, and check again to see if it works. Then you can again make the website private. This is to check if the private status of your website has somehow something to do with the issue.
  • >>>>> To clarify, the website is already published. It’s just that this particular post wasn’t. But I did try privately publishing the post though, with the same results described above.

I look forward to hearing your response. This time I will check this page rather than rely on my email to notify me of your response. Hoping to hear soon, because I need to publish my post soon. Note, if my developer friend ends up helping, he may reach out to you on here as well. Thank you! ????

Warmly,
Tiffany

Hi Tiffany,

thank you for the information. This is helpful to understand the situation.

Freesoul Deactivate Plugins doesn’t disable any plugin for a post that has the “draft” status.

This is because a draft can’t have a pretty URL. You can reach it only if you are logged in with a URL that looks like https://yoursite.com/?p=324, where in this example 324 is the ID of the post.

FDP needs an URL like https://yoursite.com/sample-post-name/. It’s so because FDP saves the settings considering the parts of the URL you have after https://yoursite.com/.
As written in the plugin page at the section “Requirements”:

Only the permalink structures “Day and name”, “Month and name”, “Post name” and the custom ones ending with “%postname%” are supported for permanently deactivating plugins (they are also better for SEO).

However, you can still have a preview of the page to see how will be when it’s published.
On the preview, you will see the plugins that will be disabled when you publish the post.
You need to click on the lens icon that is after “Current Theme” in the action buttons bar.
See the following picture for clarification.

The FDP popup says

… It was not possible to get the disabled plugins. Maybe this page redirects to another page or something went wrong.

this is because for getting the information, FDP tries to go to an URL that looks like https://yoursite.com/sample-page-name but that page redirects to a error page 404. The only URL that can be visible would be an URL that looks like https://yoursite.com/?p=324, where in this example 324 is the ID of the post.

I agree that this is something not clear that the user can’t know. However, this is how it works.
I will try to warn the user in the backend when you have a draft post.

I suggest you check the post with the lens as suggested above. When the post is ready, check it again after it’s published. It should work then.

The only thing that should not be as you described is that when you have a privately published post, contrary to what you said, it should work. I’ve right now tested again a privately published post, and it works without problems for me.

I also suggest you to create a new post that is totally published, and check if FDP disables the right plugins. If not so, may be there are other settings of FDP that are overriding the Singles settings, like the Custom URLs.

I hope it helps.

Have a great day!
Jose

@tiffany-clark

Thanks Jose! That’s all so interesting. I’ll need to come back later to review what you’ve said in greater detail as I’m so under the gun at this point, timing-wise. Thankfully, it looks like my developer friend may have figured out a work-around for me that should work for this post at least, since I need to publish it so soon. Meanwhile, thanks again! ????