Theme spontaneously deactivated itself!

What plugins are running?

Hmm, let’s see…

Spam Karma 2.2 r3
Batch Categories .91
Custom Query String 2.6
Paged Comment Editing 0.4
Fold Category List 1.0b4
Get Custom Field Values 2.1
Live Comment Preview 1.7
Post editor enhancer for WordPress 0.1.1
WP-PageNavi 2.0
Better Feed 1.1

I also have some funky auto-SQL action going on…

https://www.brendanloy.com/2006/04/cnn-auto-blogging-working-again.html

…but I don’t think that can be the culprit, because that runs an SQL query every five minutes, and it takes the theme an hour or more to deactivate itself. Presumably, if my SQL queries were somehow messing things up, it would happen within 5 minutes, the first time the query runs.

Having the exact same problem with another theme. Using no other plugins. :/

I have exactly the same problem. I’ve using my own designed template and my plugins list is totally different. I don’t think is a plugin related problem, but a bug in the WordPress code. I’ve posted a bugtracker entry about this, but I got kicked back to the forums. ??

I figured out a workaround: rename the “default” directory to “kubrick,” and rename the theme you actually want to use to “default.” That way, when the MySQL database for whatever reason automatically switches the “template” and “stylesheet” rows on the “wp_options” table to the word “default,” they’re still pointing to the right theme. Works like a charm!

(The only side effect: you, and potentially other users of your blog, will need to clear your cache/cookies after the change takes place, because initially the browser may incorrectly believe it has already loaded the “default” stylesheet, when really that is the Kubrick stylesheet. If that makes any sense. Anyway, if you do this and your blog looks funny, clear your cache/cookies.)

Any time I’ve ever seen this happening is when you change the theme name in the stylesheet, or rename the theme folder (via FTP) or something simple like that. If you just reactivate the theme, and don’t make that change again, you’ll be fine.

ladydelaluna, that doesn’t describe what happened to me, and it doesn’t sound like it describes what happened to ryanglenn or suexID, either. My database was repeatedly, spontaneously changing the data fields that control which theme is active, setting them to “default,” without any action whatsoever on my part. I would then reactivate the correct theme through the WP interface, and it would work fine for a while, but then it would spontaneously change to a different theme again. No FTPing involved. The only time where FTP became involved was in my workaround — if you rename the the desired theme <i>to</i> “default,” and then activate it as such, this weird spontaneous-MySQL-change issue, whatever is causing it, will stop creating problems because it will be “switching” to the theme you’re already using.

Trust me, I wouldn’t be posting to the forums if the solution was as simple as activating my theme. I’m a man, and we don’t like asking for directions :), so I always try the obvious steps, usually about five times each ?? before finally giving up and realizing that I need to ask for help…

pardon me then, as a woman, who enjoys trying to help people, for apparantly giving you, a “man”, a suggestion that you already thought of…

i was only trying to be helpful. i stated that the only time i’ve ever seen this happen was during a certain circumstance. it was not an attempt to discredit you or what you may or may not have tried doing to solve the problem.

my apologies for not knowing better than to assume, since you didn’t say one way or the other whether you’d done what i’d mentioned or not, that i could help you. trust me, it won’t happen again.

Ladydelaluna, I’ve had the issue with renaming themes, and seeing your web page blank. It does happen in the circumstances you describe, and we ought to watch out if we use themeswitchers, perhaps limit experiments to a blog set up for that alone.

ladydelaluna, my comments about being a man were intended as <i>self</i>-deprecating, not making fun of <i>you</i>, and anyway they were purely good-natured, as I thought the smiley-faces would have indicated. I’m not sure what I said that offended you so much. I apologize for it, whatever it was. But I would humbly suggest that you consider following what Wikipedia calls the “assume good faith” policy online. Since there’s no way to tell people’s tone of voice online, it’s easy to misinterpret people, so I think it’s generally a good idea to assume that people don’t mean anything bad unless they clearly demonstrate otherwise. I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that you said or did anything wrong. I was just trying to clarify the nature of our problem, and then make a humorous comment about myself.

Darn it, I keep forgetting that HTML code doesn’t work here…

You can use HTML tags here. If you look below your comment box, you’ll see a list of allowed tags.

I have exactly the same issue. Looking at the initial plugin list I see the Custom Query String that I am also using. I wonder if that could be causing the switch?

There are rare, but known cases, that can cause this sort of behavior. I don’t think there’s a known fix yet.

https://trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/3907