Site’s down after 2.8.4 upgrade, back to 2.7.1

FTP into your site and rename wp-content/plugins/sponsors-slideshow-widget. If you still can’t login, try renaming the wp-content/plugins folder.

Running old versions is a really, really bad idea. See here:
https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/307660

Upgrade then fix the problems. Don’t just ignore them.

Otto, I know, and I was trying to upgrade like a good little WP person, but this has been a nightmare.

Esmi, I moved that plugin and several others that were causing error messages into another folder. The site came back up. I’ve been rebuilding everything, including widgets that rely on the sponsors slideshow plugin. I’ve reverted to the older version of the plugin as well as going back to WP 2.7.1.

Obviously, there is something I’m doing wrong, even though I thought I had followed all of the pre-upgrade instructions. I will try again, although I might wait until I have some help from the fellow who did some customization of the theme for me. I have a feeling there are some conflicts there.

The biggest upgrade issue is almost certainly going to be your plugins. WP 2.8 effectively caused some plugins to stop functioning properly and, in some cases, actively interfere with the site’s display and Admin. That’s not because of an issue with WP but because these plugins were not coded in line with the published WP plugin specs. 2.8 merely highlighted the problems.

So I’d suggest that you check all of your plugins to see if they are currently, and officially, compatible with 2.8. Be wary of any plugin that hasn’t been updated for a year or 2. Assume that you won’t be able to use these plugins and see if you can source suitable, compatible, alternatives.

Do the same checks on your theme.

If you try upgrading again, deactivate all plugins as before but, post-upgrade do not activate any plugins that are potentially incompatible. Stick with the ones you know are good at first. Activate them one-by-one and check the site and Admin area thoroughly after each re-activation.

Then turn your attention to the potentially incompatible plugins. At this point, you have to decide whether any of them is worth the risk. If it is, again, activate them one-by-one and check the site and Admin area thoroughly after each re-activation. If possible, leave the site running for a day or so before trying the next re-activation (I’ve known some cases where problems only kicked in after a day or so).

Given the recent hack warning and the fact that versions 2.5 – 2.7 appear to be most at risk, I’d echo Otto’s advice and strongly recommend that you upgrade asap. Even if it means living without some of your favourite plugins.

A clean working site minus a few fancy features is far better than a hacked site.

OK, Esmi, I’ll try again using your methods.

Otto, maybe you’d better remove my URL, if you’d be so kind.

Done.

Suggestion: make a complete copy of the site and database. Change the copy’s wp-config to point to the new database. Upgrade that. Solve the problems there. Once you know how, then you can upgrade the main site.

XAMPP is a good way to run a WordPress installation on your own computer.

Thank you, Otto. Good suggestions. Can you also remove the path part of that post? That was dumb of me.

I finally got it all working again, by being more patient. I did a database backup, saved that to my hard drive (24.1MB), saved all the WP 2.7.1 files and wp-content files, copied all the widget PHP code and even the Widget Logic code for those that need it, disabled all the plugins (that’s a wretched feeling!), and did the automatic upgrade. I was told by a new friend today NEVER to do it the automatic way, but it worked for me today. I followed the directions on this page: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Upgrading_WordPress_Extended to the letter.

After that seemed to be working, I activated each plugin, one at a time, checking to see each was working on the front page as well as in admin. Some of the widget code didn’t survive, for some reason, so I was glad I had made copies. It wasn’t hard to rebuild those widgets (I have a lot of lists of old archived articles from pre-Wordpress days that have to show up only on certain category pages, so I use PHP code and Widget Logic for those). The site is pretty complex, because we’re trying to force WordPress to be a CMS, and we’re pushing the envelope a bit.

A side benefit was that as I went through the plugins, I found a few I’m not really using anymore, so I cleaned them out of there. Am I the only one here who goes a little plugin-nuts now and then? It’s like having a free pass in a candy store!

All in all, this time things went pretty smoothly. Thanks to all here (and Cathy, who took pity on me and emailed me last night with suggestions).

I’ve always used the automatic upgrade. It works well in most cases. Half the time I don’t bother to disable the plugins first. ??

But the DB backup is a good idea, always. I use the WP-DB-Backup plugin to schedule backups on most sites.

I have that plugin too. It seems to work well. Thanks for cleaning up my mess in the first post.

Since then, I found the site was hacked. Details coming….I’ve got a boffo team of WP gurus working on it, one of whom saw this thread and got in touch with me, and turned out to be a very competent hack-fixer. Apparently this happened in July when I was still using 2.7.1, and just now showed up. I need to learn more about how to harden my sites against attacks.