Plugin activation broken on one child site after plugin deletion

  • Resolved NinjaDoll_

    (@ninjadoll_)


    9 years, 4 months ago

    Hi there —

    I deleted an old plugin that wasn’t working properly on a child site in a multi-site setup. It was only ever activated on child #2, which now has the issue of not being able to activate its own instance of the plugin. I have to network activate plugins in order for child #2 to use them, but oddly enough, child sites 3, 4 and 5 don’t have this issue and work just fine.

    The remaining plugins themselves all work fine, too. They all play quite nicely together and are current versions, some paid and some demo.

    I would like to get child #2 activating on its own again, but there are no errors thrown (I have debug on). The page tells me the plugin is activated, but the status on the plugin remains deactivated, and the plugin isn’t actually activated.

    Does anyone know how I can go about fixing this, if there’s a fix? I’ve been searching forums but haven’t yet found an answer to something quite like this. I’m perplexed.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Moderator Bet Hannon

    (@bethannon1)

    So you deleted and then reinstalled this plugin you are having errors with?

    Are you saying that you have to network ALL plugins for site #2 to be able to use them? If so, the problem may be with site #2, and not with the plugins themselves.

    Please give the name of the plugin, so we have some idea how it might be trying to create settings in the database.

    Thread Starter NinjaDoll_

    (@ninjadoll_)

    Sorry, I don’t recall the exact name but it was a front-end user login. It worked fine but was too cumbersome for the client’s needs. Once I deactivated and uninstalled it, child site #2 refused to activate its own plugins. Any plugins. And it was the only site using the user login plugin.

    If the problem exists with only that one child site, I haven’t a clue how to fix it in multisite :/ I’ve rolled through WP and the plugin directories for weird code and checked SQL for any artifacts from the plugin but so far I’ve found nothing.

    Moderator Bet Hannon

    (@bethannon1)

    Ok. So the plugin is no longer on the site, and it’s only the one affected site that has issues…

    Clearly, the problem is with site #2, and there is some setting in that site’s database tables left over. But that can be really tricky to find–because it’s not just related to the problem plugin, but a setting that deals with all plugins.

    You could try to find the problem plugin, create a fresh test WP site with only this plugin on it (localhost will work), then look through the database for what entries it makes. This will be a lot easier to do on a single fresh install. Once you know what sort of settings as plugin leaves, then you can search for those strings in your multisite database– which MAY or MAY NOT help, since the setting is something global for plugins. Don’t forget to make a backup of your database before you start poking around in it (I had to learn that one the hard way once!).

    If you are using domain mapping on this problem subsite (or a new URL is not an issue for this site), one option would be to simply transfer your content (pages, posts and media) from the site #2 into a new subsite, then change the domain mapping to go to the new subsite. I realize that may not be an option.

    Thread Starter NinjaDoll_

    (@ninjadoll_)

    I have a secondary site that I can transfer to and check it. Database is backed up so I’m good to go that way, thank you for the suggestion. It’s a shame I can’t find the artifact just by looking in the database entries, and an even bigger shame if I have to rebuild most of the site simply to allow it to activate its own plugins. BUT…lessons learned everywhere, right?

    Weird, though, that it only affected the one site. I would’ve thought I’d have issues at the network admin level (where I deleted it) rather than just one child site out of several (where I deactivated it).

    Moderator Bet Hannon

    (@bethannon1)

    It sounds like it only affected that site since that’s the only site you activated the plugin on. I think that means that you would look in the db tables for that site.

    If you could remember what the plugin was, you could create a subsite, activate, then do a diff check on the db export to see what it left in the db…

    Thread Starter NinjaDoll_

    (@ninjadoll_)

    After a few days of looking, I got a clue from this post from 3 years ago: this thread.

    1. I restored the user_roles in the **_2_options table from a different child site. This allowed me to add user_roles, which I found had evaporated along with the plugin issue.

    Then I deleted entries in the **_users table of the main install, all of them except Admin.

    2. Deactivated all the plugins, added users back with each reactivation, and found the plugin throwing up the bad stuff for site-specific activation was a conflict between TinyMCE Advanced and Black Studio MCE.

    So while the plugin I deleted did cause some damage that was easily repaired, the issue about activating plugins on child #2 actually was a good ol’fashioned conflict when the network activated TinyMCE while I had the other one active on the child site.

    Thanks for your help! Led me in the right direction and I didn’t have to redo the site!

    Moderator Bet Hannon

    (@bethannon1)

    Wow! Glad you got it figured out!

    That old post is actually helpful to me with a user issue I’ve been trying to fix too! ??

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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