Suddenly Missing Sidebars

is the image size of flickr bigger then the size of the sidebar? go all the way down to the page..has it moved there?

No, they’re just small thumbnails and it’s been working like that for months. I don’t think it’s the Flickr rss thingy doing it, but I thought I’d add it in the description in case someone asked what’s in the sidebars.

Looks like the source is cut off before the index.php is concluded, and footer.php isn’t even being called.

My guess is someone was using the Theme Editor and the server/browser burped. This happens with php-based editors.

Got backup?

No backup. I mean, all the info in the sidebars is in my sidebar template, but how to get it to work again? Which files need to be restored from older versions?

Also, three new posts have been made since the sidebars disappeared and all other content seems to be perfectly intact. Sorry if I sound like I don’t know what I’m doing, but… I don’t know what I’m doing. ??

One other great piece of info I just found out. I was reading through the instructions on upgrading WordPress and went over to my control panel at Dreamhost to backup the database. It seems that I can’t get into phpMyAdmin as it gives me a “couldn’t find the server” error. I’m afraid to mess around with it anymore. It has a restore button, but I don’t know what that does.

Only you and Dreamhost have root access. I suggest you ask them if they can help.

I have. So does any of this make sense to anyone? Is there some explanation as to what may have happened? Is it likely that my missing sidebars are a database problem?

Well, Yosemite is right. But before assuming it’s a database error, maybe someone with “privileges” went in there and messed with something they shouldn’t have.

Go to your “admin” panel, and under “presentation” look at the “index.php” (“Main Index Template”) file. Scroll through the file, and see if it ends in this:

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

(the closing div tag may or may not be there – depends on what theme is being used. You just want to be sure those PHP lines are there – and the sidebar may not be at the bottom, either. You’ll have to look for these lines.)

If they aren’t there, then someone accidentally deleted something while messing around ?? Put ’em back in and work from there.

Another alternative is to see if there’s some kind of PHP error – you need to ask your host if PHP error reporting is turned on. If it isn’t (which it may not be), then ask them to turn it on for you. Once it’s on, it should show an error message on your page that will tell you exactly where the error lies. (If it *is* on already, then it’s not a PHP problem, or there would be an error showing right now.)

But give those two ideas a shot and see if it starts something up.

Is there some explanation as to what may have happened?

Yes, read my post above.

Is it likely that my missing sidebars are a database problem?

I see no indication of that. Look at your source and you’ll see where it gets cut off…

Well, both the current version of index.php and the original that came with the theme are the same and neither has any code about sidebars,. I do have a separate sidebar.php file though. Should I post the code to one or both of those here?

Brooks:

I just had the same same thing happen to me, It looked like I lost all the sidebars no matter what theme I changed to, but they were actually way down at the bottom of the web page. I replaced all the WordPress files one by one except for my content. Nothing worked.

It turned out I had a corrupted post somehow. I deleted the last post I had made before everything went haywire, reloaded my homepage in my browser and everything is back to normal. Weird.

Thanks for everyone’s help.

Well, I have figured it out! It actually was the flickrrss tag I had in the sidebar. I found out when I just found another three column theme and activated it. Then I started adding the custom stuff to the sidebar and when I added the flickrrss section it messed up that theme too, so I went back to my original theme and deleted the flickrss and all is well.

Now I just have to figure out how to get that functionality back to the site since so many people like it.

Here is what I was using.

https://eightface.com/wordpress/flickrrss/

Some parameters to check:
https://eightface.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=28