Fatal error: Call to undefined function: is_admin() “What the

WOW be very careful on manually updating to fix this.

It just wiped my whole database. luckily was a fresh test site or I would be really mad.

BACKUP THE DATABASE FIRST!!!

Yes, absolutely back up the database first – if i hadn’t, i’d be crying right now.

My webhost doesn’t limit the mem setting; and i’ve happily run wp-2.7 – 2.9b with the mem limit set at 128; worked just fine.

The really strange aspect to me is my add-on domain https://www.websitenamehere.com *requires* more than 32mb, and is actually running fine with a mem limit = 128 in the wp-settings.php in its directory (for https://www.websitenamehere.com) – I keep waiting for the add on site to break because of mem limit=32 in the primary domain directory being the only setting that works; and yes, I’ve tried 64m, 92m, 128m – anything over 32m in the primary wp-settings.php file breaks that site, and all the sub sites.

I think the whole issue is the auto-upgrade. Like the error in 2.8.3

I run 40 wp sites and have never had to adjust any mem limit. The only time I see a mem limit uissue is when building a sitemap on a huge site and that plugin needs more to finish.

The only reason why I even triggered this error was the theme was trying to import a video, so depends on your theme and plugins.

ok. i just now manually reinstalled *everything* yet again – still have the same issue re: any mem limit over 32m in the primary domain folder’s wp-settings.php file breaks all of my wordpress sites – including the primary domain.

if this is a bug – what is the correct escalation path to alert the dev team to this issue?

thank you….!

This function is in wp_settings.php. I had the same problem because I hadn’t copied that file over. As soon as I did, it fixed it..

[signature removed]

Thanks Portent. I had my blog hacked and re-uploaded the wp-includes file but still had the same error thrown as the original poster. So I followed your advice and uploaded the wp_settings.php file for ver. 2.9 and now I’m back online (hopefully for good….)

ya the wp-settings.php file.
just wiped my whole site that I just spent 3 hours building.

WP 2.9 and upgrade really sucks, they really need to fix this

And I just wiped mine. That was some hard work there.

Please, please fix this.

I just managed to get myself out of this problem. Still not sure why it worked, but here’s what I did:

While using auto-upgrade, I got the “Fatal error: Call to undefined function: is_admin()” message.
Tried to roll back, but couldn’t get my backups to unzip properly. So…
I went back to the error page and hit my browser’s back button.
Instead of the previous upgrade page, I got a page with an “upgrade your database” button. I clicked the button.
It took me back to my admin pages with a warning at the top to get rid of extra files from an old installation. I clicked on the link to do that.
The upgrade page reloaded, said I was done. And my blog seems to be working again, and upgraded!

Hey everyone,

I had the same problem and fixed it this way:

1. I get the error about memory limit when I am trying to auto upgrade a commerce plugin.

2. I went into wp-settings.php and changed 32 to 64

3. i get the ‘Fatal error: Call to undefined function: is_admin()’ error and I can’t get into the site on any page and the sky goes dark and I hate wordpress.

4. I read this thread and decide to not get too dramatic just yet, so I manually download wp 2.9.1 and copy across the files : wp-setings.php and vars.php to my site that is down.

5. Now it is back up and running again. So I recommend just trying this first before you backup databases, content folders etc.

Thanks for this thread, it helped me out. Help bloggers rule.

WordPress dev team – dudes, seriously, how can you release even such a minor update and have it break heaps of peoples sites. It makes us loose faith. Less updates, more stability I say. WordPress is flippn awesome but when something goes wrong the whole wordpress structure goes to hell. Less updates, more stability please.

Thank you

I just had the same error, and antistandard solution worked for me. Now that my site is up and running again i ran into another problem. None of the images i added to my post are loading. any idea why?

I did what others have said to do on this page – I copied the original wp-content folder and wp-config.php and installed wordpress (2.9.1) onto my computer. I uploaded the new installation of wordpress onto my domain and then copied the original content folder and wp-config.php file… my site ran, but it was blank. Should I have backed up the database, too? I’m guessing that’s what the problem is.
Sorry if I’m an annoying newb…

I did what Antistandard suggested and got my site back up (says I’m running 2.9.2 even though I’m using those two files from 2.9.1.

Specifically, I did:

4. ….. I manually download wp 2.9.1 and copy across the files : wp-setings.php and vars.php to my site that is down.

5. Now it is back up and running again. So I recommend just trying this first before you backup databases, content folders etc.

Thanks,

[signature removed]

I hit this same issue while upgrading from 2.8.ish to 2.9.2.

Problem was specifically a bad upload of wp-settings.php — the old version of the file was still on the FTP server, and did not contain a definition of is_admin(). The new version of that file does have is_admin() defined.

very helpful! I solved the problem. thanks wordpress community!