Keep losing the galleries from the posts

@acekin – This is a very odd issue and very unique as well.

Are all of the galleries going “missing”, or is it just some of the galleries? Also, is the time frame consistently “x” number of days that may be related to any sort of caching you may be using?

– Cais.

Cais, all the galleries disappear from all the posts and pages. I do not use a caching plugin per se, WordFence is the closest thing to that which I am willing to disable. The problem is I don’t know how to trigger it or what triggers it. If you think disabling WordFence may help understand this behavior I will be happy to do that. WordFence recently started a speed up option using what they call “Falcon Engine” but I had this problem even before that.

As far as the frequency or the interval between incidents I have not observed that. Maybe I will go back to my emails and forum posts to see if there is a pattern. But I am at a loss, total loss!

Cemal

I wouldn’t say “unique” since I have the same problem. I can also confirm not changing anything at all on my site except nextgen update.

Also, if you google “Gallery not found. Please check your settings” in brackets, there’s a lot results. Sadly, they’re solutions are way too complex for me as I’m not a programer.

Ace, are you able to create new galleries via shortcode? If I do I the gallery not found message.

Author, how do we roll back?

@acekin Since yours is a problem that comes periodically, I understand that in your situation it may be very difficult to follow the normal troubleshooting, but somehow you should try to put it in place because it is a good way to find or to exclude any conflicts with the theme or a plugin, and maybe the issue happens only periodically in reaction to a particular action.
The thing to do would be disable all other plugins and activate a WordPress Twenty series theme, when galleries are in place, but you should stay in this situation for some days to see if the issue happens again, so I understand that it can be very annoying on a production site.
Alternatively, even though it might not be as effective, you can arm yourself with patience and try one plugin at a time, and so if the issue happens you’ll know that (at 99%) it’s not that particular plugin, and you can go on with the deactivation of another plugin or theme.
However, even if I don’t have the evidence, this problem could be related to the database as well.
Sorry if I’m not very helpful with this answer, but maybe it’s something to chew on.

@flt4ever “Gallery not found. Please check your settings” is a generic message that doesn’t necessarily reflect the source of the same problem.
From a simple syntax error in a shortcode to more complex issues such as the one of the OP, the cause can be different. In this case, sometimes galleries are visible and sometimes not, and this is something that doesn’t seem to happen to you. Here is the “uniqueness”, because they disappear on their own, not after an user action (such as an update or a wrong shortcode).
So you should open your own topic describing your own problem, because asking help in someone else’s topic is useless for you and very bad for OP.
As for roll back: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/nextgen-gallery/developers/

Tizz, thank you for taking another stab at my problem. Thinking the process you described through, I cannot imagine an existing plugin is causing the problem. Because, they are all active now and everything is working. Disabling them will not gain any additional information for me, or for you.

If as you speculate the problem may be due to a database problem, which is probably a more productive venue to follow, how can I go about detecting the offending piece in the DB? Are there tell-tale signs that may indicate a potential problem? If I send a copy of my DB backup to NG team will that help them to look into it?

I am beginning to realize that being this invested into a technology can be a dead end road for all of us. With over 450 galleries and 5,000+ photographs in the collection I feel that I am trapped in that dead end street with nowhere to go. I truly wish developers of similar software can get together and establish a common storage platform. Other bells and whistles can be added by each developer to make their product more appealing while allowing the user to freely switch from one to the other.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Cemal

Come to think of it, one thing has changed on my site. I noticed an update to NextGEN Gallery and applied the update. Does this add any information for the Team NextGEN? I don’t know how long after that the galleries actually broke.

One workaround solution, although temporary, may be to add “Save YOUR Settings” and “Restore YOUR setting” options to the tools.

Cemal

OK it happened again! There is now additional information, pure luck! One post with three galleries inserted by NGG 2.x lost all three galleries. I edited the post and inserted one of the galleries using the shortcode and it now displays under the error message. Look at the post:
https://www.keptlight.com/salute-to-viktor-plotnikov/

you will see three error messages indicating missing galleries. Under the first error message you will see the gallery thumbnails coming from the shortcode insertion.

The code for the new style insertion is:
<img class=”ngg_displayed_gallery mceItem” src=”https://www.keptlight.com/nextgen-attach_to_post/preview/id–5359&#8243; alt=”” />

Clearly the “id” is not the same ID used in the shortcode. This must be a new ID numbering system. What seems to be different this time is that only one gallery insertion is broken although I have not checked every single post. And that insertion was done using NGG 2.x tool and its inserted code. I don’t know why other gallery insertions are intact this time but I am grateful for that, for the time being. I also tried using the gallery insertion tool in a post that seems to be working as well. When all of them fail, the insertion tool fails as well.

I hope this unusual break (a lucky break) provides more information to the support team.

Cemal

@acekin – This is looking rather complicated but possibly some leads to consider …

The message text “Invalid Displayed Gallery” is basically only generated in three places.

The first is when NextGEN Gallery’s debugging is active (that is not the case on your site).
The second is when a shortcode is not properly written (again not the case as your shortcode worked correctly on the sample page).

The third instance of this error message refers to when the “code for the new style insertion” is used (read: the ATP was used to insert the display) and NextGEN does not find or cannot reference the placeholder ID that was written for that insertion.

Unfortunately, this only tells us why the message appears not what is causing the issue for the ID to not be “found” as the page is being rendered.

We may need to have our developers look into your site (again, my apologies for all of these inconveniences) to see if they can sort out what is the root issue to this as I cannot think of anything off-hand that would remove or negate these effects.

So far, the only work-around has been to use the Reset Option, correct?

– Cais.

PS: Please feel free to start a new Bug Report (https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/report-bug/) on this as it is very unusual and we would definitely like to get to the source of it. C.

Thank you Cais for your reply. I will start a bug report in addition to keeping this thread open.

This time, I did not have to reset anything. Only one gallery insertion was broken and others were working, including the NGG gallery insertion tool in a post.

Is my observation about the new ID system correct? Because the number in the line of code I shared has nothing to do with the gallery numbers I have.

Your team has full admin access to my site, it was in the private message I sent a while back, and it is still valid.

Cemal

@acekin – Thanks for confirming the credentials you shared before. I have already written this issue up for our developers to review.

The placeholder ID number is not relevant to the gallery/album ID as displays inserted with the ATP are kept as unique instances so they each have a unique ID. In most cases this is not even apparent unless you look at the “Text” tab of the editor.

– Cais.

Thank you Cais. I will leave that post the way it is with missing galleries and one shortcode gallery working. I hope they will get a chance to look at it quickly so that I can bring back the gallery display on that page. One of them is very special to me.

Cemal

@acekin – Perhaps you could simply use shortcode structures on that page temporarily (and leave the ATP insertions as well) so you will be able to display you images (which I think is most important … and I enjoy looking at them as time allows) and we will still have a live example of the issue.

Granted the “Invalid Displayed Gallery” messages will still be there but may not be so noticeable in the short-term.

– Cais.

Well, it happened again. I lost all the galleries this time. I will keep it there for a limited time and get back to work. If anyone from the NGG team still would like to see what is on my site please use the login credentials I have sent to you.

https://www.keptlight.com/exhibits/ (select any of the exhibits)
https://www.keptlight.com/portfolios/ (select any of the portfolios)

to see the missing galleries. Or choose any of the posts to see the same. This is very disconcerting. I should add that these are all shortcode insertions, now they are acting up.

Cemal

I had to reset all the settings to default to bring back the galleries which are important for my site. I really need to find a permanent solution to this, maybe I will organize my galleries totally outside the realm of WordPress. I used to use Slideshowpro, maybe I will revive my license and slowly migrate all my photographs to that. I pain for sure, but, live and learn.

Incidentally, the gallery that was inserted by NG 2.x gallery insert tool still does not display other than an error message. I will keep the error message until I hear from NGG or give up on this solution, whichever comes first.

This is the post with the error messages instead of galleries displaying. What is displaying properly is the old shortcode insertion of the same galleries. Maybe the presence of the new syntax is the source of the problem, who knows?

https://www.keptlight.com/salute-to-viktor-plotnikov/

Cemal

Currently my galleries are displayed, but I am curious about the integrity of the code to display the gallery with the new method. As I wrote before, the code is:
<img class=”ngg_displayed_gallery mceItem” src=”https://www.keptlight.com/nextgen-attach_to_post/preview/id–5359&#8243; alt=”” />

It worked when I inserted the gallery (or several galleries on that page) now it does not do anything other than to produce the error message. Is the code correct? I do not know this syntax so I am unable to figure out if there is wrong ling, extra dash or a missing dash, or, …

Would it be possible to add the option to use the old shortcode instead of the new method to the insertion tool?

Cemal