Products keep disappearing at random

Hi @unwantedlife

When products disappear and return 404 errors, it usually indicates an issue with your website’s permalinks or a conflict with a plugin. I understand that this issue happens randomly so a conflict test can’t be used to isolate the problem.

However, since it’s intermittent, I suggest monitoring if you notice a pattern or a trigger when the issue happens. Can you also walk us through the steps you did to replicate the problem? You may also try to record it for us to see using a Free screen recorder for Mac and PC | Loom just in case you are able to replicate it.

In the meantime, try to flush and regenerate your permalinks by navigating to Settings → Permalinks. You don’t have to change anything, just click Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

I would also recommend checking with your hosting provider if there are any server-side caching issues or if there are any limitations set by your hosting environment that may cause these issues.

Please can you share the following:

• System Status Report: navigate to WooCommerce → Status → select Get system report and then Download for support. This will download a TXT file that has the contents of the SSR to share with us.
• Fatal Error log: Share a copy of any fatal error log found under WooCommerce → Status → Logs.

Looking forward to your response!

I can’t upload a file to this forum, which is why I coped and pasted all the details in my reply, so how come the informations not in that lengthy data dump? I can’t email you the file because you only email a copy of your reply by a noreply email.

I’ll talk to my host, but given that my permalinks for literally everything else is fine and it’s solely an issue with products listed through WooCommerce, I’m not sure they’ll be of any help

oh, this is a reply to my forum request and not my review. You can find the data dump of the information you’re asking for here:

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/products-keep-disappearing-at-random-2/#post-17218856

Hi @unwantedlife

I can’t upload a file to this forum, which is why I coped and pasted all the details in my reply

You could share a link instead. Loom generates a link when you’ve recorded the video same as Snipboard.io for screenshots.

this is a reply to my forum request and not my review

Can we keep the support here instead of the WooCommerce review page? Thank you for sharing that link though so we can check what’s already been done. Please send over your system status and error logs on this thread so we’ll have all at one place to investigate what’s happening.

Let me know if you have any questions.

your team replied to the review before the forum, but we can keep it here if you want, but you’ll want to read my last couple of posts on the review and reply to them here if you want to continue the troubleshooting here

Hi there @unwantedlife ??

Let’s zoom out on this, for a moment. The issue, from what I gather, is with products disappearing at random, as you are reporting.

Furthermore, while inspecting the site’s System Status Report (SSR) I noticed an integration with Printful is set up (for the t-shirts I believe).

While visiting the site at https://shop.unwantedlife.me/checkout I can see PayPal as the only payment gateway (option) when I cannot find it in the site’s System Status Report (SSR). Which leads me to believe it is PayPal standard and the store exists for various years already. Could you confirm if that’s the case, or otherwise, please?

Just to clarify, when did you first start noticing products disappearing? Was it after a hosting provider change, or a similar big change, perhaps?

Most importantly, as we’re troubleshooting the functionality of core WooCommerce here, and the store has dependencies on 3rd party plugins presently, would you be willing to troubleshoot with only WooCommerce and the Storefront theme (linked here)? Even if that means to keep an eye out in the staging site alone, if not possible to strip down the live site while this issue persists.

We await your response to better assist you.

I don’t know what SSR is or how to access that, and I don’t see a third-party plugin for PayPal. I can’t remember how long I’ve had my store, but it’s probably less than 2 years.

I first started noticing my products were disappearing after adding new products, but then I noticed it would happen without new ones being added as well. However, most of the time I didn’t notice until someone alerted me to the issues or I got a report about my most visited pages, where they’d all be 404

With the staging site, clicking the workbook button on the homepage takes you to a “Oops! That page can’t be found”, something that doesn’t happen on the actual live shop sub-domain

Hi there @unwantedlife ??

I don’t know what SSR is or how to access that, and I don’t see a third-party plugin for PayPal. I can’t remember how long I’ve had my store, but it’s probably less than 2 years.

Just to note, the site’s System Status Report (SSR) was shared a few days ago, over here.

Can you please share a screenshot of what you see at the screen at https://shop.unwantedlife.me/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wc-settings&tab=checkout? That will help us clarify further about PayPal. Here’s how to make a screenshot:

https://wordpress.com/support/make-a-screenshot/

I first started noticing my products were disappearing after adding new products, but then I noticed it would happen without new ones being added as well. However, most of the time I didn’t notice until someone alerted me to the issues or I got a report about my most visited pages, where they’d all be 404

With the staging site, clicking the workbook button on the homepage takes you to a “Oops! That page can’t be found”, something that doesn’t happen on the actual live shop sub-domain

I went ahead with visiting each product page, from the products included in the page at https://shop.unwantedlife.me/store, and all of them appeared as expected. Meaning, I was able to browse each product page, and add the corresponding to Cart.

Could you share a product URL, where the “Oops! That page can’t be found” error can be reproduced, in order to investigate further?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

i know how to take a screenshot, but your forum setup doesn’t let me add images

https://shop.unwantedlife.me/wp-admin/admin.php?page=wc-settings&tab=checkout

“PayPal Standard redirects customers to PayPal to enter their payment information” is the only one activated.

When I said:

“With the staging site, clicking the workbook button on the homepage takes you to a “Oops! That page can’t be found”, something that doesn’t happen on the actual live shop sub-domain”

I was talking about the staging site you asked me to create, and not my original subdomain. For some reason the staging site doesn’t work like the subdomain currently does, at least for now

Hello @unwantedlife,

i know how to take a screenshot, but your forum setup doesn’t let me add images

You can upload the images and share the link with us here. If you don’t already have a screenshot service installed, here are a few free options: 

• https://snipboard.io
• https://skitch.com/
• https://getcloudapp.com/

“With the staging site, clicking the workbook button on the homepage takes you to a “Oops! That page can’t be found”, something that doesn’t happen on the actual live shop sub-domain”

The fact that this issue gets resolved simply by logging in suggests it might be related to a scheduled action, as all scheduled actions with the Action Scheduler trigger upon admin login.

Could you please check if there are any recent error logs?

Here are step-by-step instructions:

1. Navigate to WooCommerce > Status > Logs.
2. In the upper right corner, use the drop-down menu.
3. Search for the keywords “fatal” or simply check the date for when this happened.
4. This should display relevant logs. Click on each log and then view them.
5. You can copy and paste them here or use a text-sharing app like https://gist.github.com/

Link to image: https://d.pr/i/Rhd6La

Look forward to hearing back from you.

The fact that this issue gets resolved simply by logging in suggests it might be related to a scheduled action, as all scheduled actions with the Action Scheduler trigger upon admin login.

I can’t be sure, but one of the times it’s happened, I may have scheduled the new product to go live at a later date to coincide when the publication of the accompanying post. But that certainly didn’t happen every time my products disappeared.

“no matches found” appears when typing “fata” into that box and clicking view. How long are the logs held for? There are also no logs in the drop-down box since 18th November

Hi there @unwantedlife ??

“no matches found” appears when typing “fata” into that box and clicking view. How long are the logs held for? There are also no logs in the drop-down box since 18th November

That date appears to be exactly a month in the past.

I’m curious, is there a workflow in place, for database manipulation (edits, deletions), perhaps? That would help explain much of this odd behavior.

I’m curious, is there a workflow in place, for database manipulation (edits, deletions), perhaps? That would help explain much of this odd behavior.

no idea what you’re talking about, so I couldn’t tell you

Google Console has just emailed me to say there’s a “Blocked due to access forbidden (403)” on:

https://shop.unwantedlife.me/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/2023/09/Eating-Schedule-Unwanted-Life-glcw4b.pdf

I don’t know if that’s relevant.

I added a new product today to see if that’ll trigger the issue, although I didn’t schedule it. I’ll schedule a new product tomorrow

monster insights has just shown me I have two pages that have gone missing

https://shop.unwantedlife.me/404.html%3Fpage=/product/eating-schedule-and-meal-planner%3F_gl=1%2Agcrjaw%2A_ga%2AMTQwNzQ4MDgwLjE3MDAwODkzMTc.%2A_ga_Z070XMBKE2%2AMTcwMDM0OTA2NC45LjEuMTcwMDM1MDY0My4wLjAuMA..%2A_ga_P7FM1NQM04%2AMTcwMDM0OTA2My45LjEuMTcwMDM1MDY0My42MC4wLjA.&_ga=2.204954064.1316898175.1700089330-140748080.1700089317&from=https://unwantedlife.me/

https://shop.unwantedlife.me/404.html%3Fpage=/product-category/workbook&from=https://shop.unwantedlife.me/store

Hi @unwantedlife,

Welcome back!

Google Console has just emailed me to say there’s a “Blocked due to access forbidden (403)” on:

Thanks for sharing more details.

To troubleshoot the 403 issue, I would suggest reaching out to your website host to assist you in checking the server logs to see why your links are blocked.

monster insights has just shown me I have two pages that have gone missing

It is possible there could be a server side issue leading to the broken URLs. I checked your site and could find all the missing products directly from the store page. Here’s a screenshot for reference: https://snipboard.io/iM5Q8P.jpg.

Please reach out to your host and ask them for any logs from your server so that we can try to understand what could be leading to the broken URLs. You could share with them the email from Google Search Console.

Cheers!