Keep losing the galleries from the posts

@acekin – As noted before there is nothing specifically wrong with the “placeholder” <img> tag(s) you are referring to … those are the references that NextGEN Gallery uses to dynamically render the gallery being displayed.

As best as I can tell, something is affecting these references and essentially appears to be removing the gallery connections. For example, in your ATP inserted galleries (those showing “red triangles” in the editor) there are no galleries actually chosen. This condition will produce the message you are seeing.

Editing those insertions and re-adding the gallery does correct the display, but something once again appears to be “removing” this later … this may lead to a possible caching issue of your site in general (usually by a service outside of WordPress).

Similar incidents have happened in the past with gallery selections being removed from the ATP insertion but that was specifically when the post was saved and related to a specific theme (which you are not using) and happened immediately, not a few days later.

We are still not seeing this issue anywhere else, it is very unique in how it is presenting; and, unfortunately since it takes days for the event to re-occur the troubleshooting could take as long or much longer as the timeframe of the issue should be taken into account as well.

We would really like to try to help you get this sorted out. Ideally we can keep to one place to carry on the discussions, and that would be best served by following up via our Bug Report conversation as splitting the conversation between these two venues may cause an important piece of information to fall through the cracks and be lost.

– Cais.

Thank you Cais. I would like to provide a status update for the sake of complete information on the thread.

Since your login to my site and reworking the new code insertion and my resetting the settings to defaults gallery presentations seem to be stable. Additionally, I made sure that the location of all the galleries is the same, they all point to their respective named folders under:
wp-content/gallery

I am also in the process of recreating all new thumbnails and they are showing properly in their respective posts. It will take a while because I am doing one gallery at a time and I have 400+ galleries. I am about 10% done but will continue to regen all the gallery thumbnails to make sure that they go to the right places and relate to the galleries they belong. It is kind of empirical validation of the integrity of the installation. I wish I could update all the thumbnails of all the galleries at once, but I will finish this in due time.

I have turned off WordFence Falcon engine that offers site speed up in case its caching may contribute to the complexity.

I will monitor the gallery behavior and report any anomaly here again.

I appreciate all the help I have received from the NextGEN team, thank you.

Cemal

@acekin – Thanks, again, for the updates and your immense patience with us and the “validation” of your galleries.

Please let us know if anything more comes to mind on this issue … it is interesting to note the use of WordFence Falcon (personally I cannot speak to its merits but there may be concerns with its caching interfering on some sites … I believe WPEngine specifically noted it for their customers).

– Cais.

OK, I have done it again! I did two things:

1. Installed a new plugin LazyLoad and
2. Used WP Clean to delete the accumulated crud, then used its Optimize feature
and the galleries are gone

I wish I checked the working of the galleries before doing the next thing. I am not sure in what order I did it. But suffice it to say that I have been using WP Clean longer than LazyLoad. So, it is possible that it’s optimize routine may be a factor. After I reset the NGG settings I will try WP Clean once more when I have more time.

Cemal

@acekin – IIRC, WP Clean has caused some issues in the past … not sure if that might be causing some of the problems you are seeing now.

– Cais.

You do recall correctly, I can verify that it is indeed WP Clean Up plugin doing some “cleaning” even before “Optimize”. I took that step and the galleries disappeared again. Needless to say WP Clean Up is now deep cleaned from my site. This is a validated problem, I am not sure what it is cleaning, or whether NGG is leaving some traces that appear like “dirt” to be cleaned. That is up to NGG and WP Clean teams to figure out.

One problem “Restore” did not fix is the set of galleries that were inserted with the new insertion tool (the official name may be different). I need to reinsert them, and I will repeat a couple of feature requests:

1. Allow saving and restoring user settings
2. Include an option to use the old shortcode which seems to be more robust, unless there are compelling reasons for using the new tool. I know I can do it manually but it will be convenient if I can do it at the time of insertion. Furthermore, it will maintain compatibility with other similar plugins, unless you specifically do not want that.
   I will now add other options I had before, but will not use WP Clean Up again.

Cemal

@acekin – Just to verify, this was the “WP DB Clean” plugin you are referring to as “WP Clean”? (I checked you site again, JIC, and see it is most definitely gone.)

The ATP is actually more robust, at least as we see it, than the old shortcode structure methods as not all possibilities of the ATP are easily exposed as parameters to be used in a standard shortcode.

You are always welcome to put forward any thoughts or ideas for Feature Requests on this form: https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/feature-voting/ … or, if it’s easier you can also use our Contact Us (https://www.nextgen-gallery.com/contact) form as well.

Thanks for the additional follow-up!

– Cais.

The cleaning plugin is NOT WB DB Clean, but “WP Clean Up“. I used to use WP DB Clean but the other looked simpler to use! Little did I know that it also had a very strong vacuum cleaner! I will also try WP Clean Up on my test bed site to see if it causes the same problem. If it does NOT, then there is something different on my WP NGG tables that present a ready to corrupt situation. The cleaning should not even touch these tables though, it is supposed to clean the redundant posts, spam comments, etc. Unless, of course, in the process of deleting redundant copies of posts the integrity of the real posts is compromised. How, I have no idea.

Cemal

@acekin – This is very valuable information, I was not thinking of the “WP Clean Up” plugin when I made the comment earlier.

Thank you, I will update our notes on that as well.

– Cais.

I can confirm with confidence that using “WP Clean Up” plugin and using it to delete what it considers redundant data (Revision, Draft, Auto Draft, Moderated Comments, Spam Comments, Trash Comments, Orphan Postmeta, Orphan Commentmeta, Orphan Relationships, Dashboard Transient Feed) breaks NextGEN Gallery presentation. I ran the same plugin on my test bed site and as soon as I clicked on “Delete All” button, the plugin cleaned up all the debris but the gallery display is broken.

Since I have run this test on my production site with months of troubles, and now on a test site with minimal content, I will consider the relationship between two plugins “hostile”. I will post this message with a link to this thread to WP Clean Up support forum as well.

Just as WP Clean Up author should check what may be causing this harm, it may be prudent for NGG team to investigate that as well just in case another similar plugin may cause the same problem and it may be due to an issue in NextGEN plugin. No other plugins are adversely affected by the cleaning process.

Cemal

@acekin – Thanks, we will be reviewing this issue further.

As it is, if the WP Clean Up author has any input we would be happy to work together to try to get this sorted out as quickly as possible so these plugins do not clash in such a “hostile” manner.

– Cais.