Service Unavailable

• What version of Connections is installed?
• How many Entries are in your directory? Navigate to the Connections Manage admin page. Yopu’ll find the count list on the upper right. Make sure all the filter on the upper left are set to “all”.
• What is the active template on the Connections Templates admin page?

I noticed the shortcode is using the template attribute set to card-single That seems to suggest that it might be a custom template and that there is code in that custom template that is broken. Try removing template="card-single" from the shortcode and make the Default Entry Card on the active template on the Connections Templates admin page.

A couple other things to try is to increase the memory allocated to PHP and increase the execution time. Here are links to a couple of tutorials with more details:

• https://connections-pro.com/faqs/increase-wordpress-memory-limit/
• https://connections-pro.com/faqs/increase-php-execution-limit/

Lastly, out of curiosity, what forum advised changing the plugin?

Thanks for your fast reply Steven. Here are the “answers” to your questions.

– The version of the Connections Business Directory Plugin is 9.9.1. I think the guy who left the company yesterday had just updated that plugin. So maybe an older version would work again? Is it possible to downgrade plugins?

– Unfortunately when I try to open the Connections Manage admin page (“…/wp-admin/admin.php?page=connections_manage” – is that the right page?) the same error appears: Service Unavailable. So I can’t see how many entries I have and if they are set up to “all”.

– Same problem with the active template: since I can’t open the admin page I can’t tell you the active template

– And for your last question: Some German websites said I should change the plugin.
The translation for the part I mean is: “When you have found out which plugin is at fault, delete it again and look for an alternative, or contact the manufacturer.” (https://wp-ninjas.de/typische-wordpress-probleme)
And on another website said the same: “If at any time you identify the plugin that is causing the error, you can uninstall it or replace it with another tool.” (https://kinsta.com/de/blog/http-fehler-503/)

I will try the tutorials you sent and see if this might solve the problem. But I will only have time to do that at the beginning of next week. I will reply here again after I tested them.

Anyway, I am sorry that I couldn’t really answer your questions but I am really thankful for your help.

Ok, so the menus appear in the admin, but you can not click on any of them?

Which version of WP is installed, the latest 5.5, correct?

The 5&6 tips in the Kinsta blog are ideal first steps.

Another good step. Deactivate and delete Connections. Your data and settings are safe and will not be removed. Now, reinstall Connections and activate it. The purpose of doing this is to help ensure a good installation. It’s rare, but it does happen that WP fails to fully apply a plugin update.

One last question, what version of PHP is WP running on? It should be at least 5.6.20 (which is pretty old). I recommend at least version 7.1 or newer. Connections will run on the old version, to be precise (I hope).

Thanks again for your message Steven.

Yes exactly. When I activate the Plugin the menus appear but when I click them I get the same error message: “Service Unavailable” and just see a white page. When I deactivate the plugin, the menus also disappear (of course).

The WP version we are using is 5.5.1
PHP version is 7.3.16

But do you mean I should deactivate, delete and then reinstall the “Connections Business Directory” Plugin? I was avoiding that because the guy working here before me said that would delete all my data as well. But when you say its safe then I will try that.

I will now also try the other steps you recommended. I will let you know how that went

Hi, so here is a small update:

I tried to increase the memory allocated to PHP and increase the execution time but that didn’t work.

I have then followed the the steps of point 6 from the Kinsta blog. These are the errors I found with the WP_DEBUG:

PHP Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; backup_restore_divi_theme_options has a deprecated constructor in /html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/backup-restore-divi-theme-options/backup-restore-divi-theme-options.php on line 16

PHP Notice: Undefined index: action in /html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ip-address-blocker/lib/lionscripts_plg_wib.class.php on line 47

PHP Notice: Undefined variable: update_db_version in /html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ip-address-blocker/lib/lionscripts_plg_wib.class.php on line 172

Unfortunatley, I have no idea what they mean and how to fix this. I am not even sure that these errors are caused by the “Connections Business Directory” Plugin.

I contacted my webhoster and they said they would recommend to install a backup with the older version of the plugin, hoping that this might help. But I would lose all the other changes I did on the website I have made in the last few days/week. So that would be the worst solution for me…

None of these PHP notices are caused by Connections. They are not critical either.

I disagree with the web host recommendation to restore a backup. There would be no guarantee that the backup would work. Connections has not changed much architecturally in quite a while. So, it is entirely possible the web host made a system-level change that would negatively affect older versions of Connections too.

Please contact me using the contact link at the bottom of the page at this link.

• https://connections-pro.com/

In the message copy-paste a link to this forum thread. I’ll see if I can get you up and running again.

I’m going to mark this thread as resolved. I look forward to hearing from you!

As always, thanks for your message. I have contacted you via the contact form on the website you send the link for. I want to thank you again for all your help and I am also looking forward to hear from you =)

Hi Steven, I just wanted to let you know that I have installed the latest Plugin-Update (I think Version 9.12) and now everything is finally working again! ??
Thanks again for all your help and support.

Kind regards

I am happy to hear that, though a bit puzzling.