Update to 3.0.0 breaks backend

I have a somewhat similar problem.

When I updated Akismet to version 3.0.0 my website stopped loading.

I checked my error logs and I found this message:

PHP Fatal error: Cannot redeclare class Akismet in /home2/jamiajou/public_html/wp-content/themes/puremagazine/lib_frame/classes/akismet.php on line 353

Can anybody help me with this?

khalidjaleel: The theme you’re using is declaring a class called “Akismet” (not a super great idea). I’ll contact the theme author and ask them to namespace their class (e.g., call the class PureMagazine_Akismet), but until they fix that, you could either downgrade to Akismet 2.6 or temporarily change your theme.

fert: Can you post a list of the plugins you have activated and the theme you’re using? Alternatively, you could disable your plugins one-by-one and find out which one is causing the conflict with Akismet that is breaking your ability to expand/collapse fields.

Theme: Twenty-Twelve child

Well, when I deactivate Akismet everything works just fine. I can compile a list tomorrow but I already tried deactivating them all. Ony Akismet is causing trouble.

How can I downgrade the plugin?

fert: Which WordPress version are you using? If Akismet was the only plugin active and the problem was still happening, that’s definitely a bug that we’d like to get fixed, but I can’t reproduce it.

You can downgrade by removing the Akismet plugin and then manually uploading the zip for 2.6 from here: https://downloads.www.ads-software.com/plugin/akismet.2.6.0.zip

It broke my blog, too. It caused a big ole Warning error message to appear across the front/top of the blog saying there was no such file or directory on line 50. I could no longer access my dashboard at all so I called my host company and they deleted Akismet and reinstalled it from a previous backup they had on file.

Christopher Finke: It was 3.8.3 yesterday (3.9 was not available yet. Now it is 3.9 and it is working again.

OK, sorry, that was not true. It is still broken with WordPress 3.9.

I try to update today and admin crached with following error message.

Warning: include_once(/home/private/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/widget.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/private/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php on line 50

Warning: include_once() [function.include]: Failed opening ‘/home/private/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/widget.php’ for inclusion (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/private/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php on line 50

Warning: require_once(/home/private/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/admin.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/private/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php on line 53

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘/home/private/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/admin.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /home/private/public_html/wp-content/plugins/akismet/akismet.php on line 53

I got the same message as webalvarez when I ran the update.

khalidjaleel: Bizz Themes has released an update to your theme (v. 2.0.3) that fixes the problem.

For anyone seeing errors or a white screen, try the solution that user DerJudge discovered:

https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/cannot-be-updated-to-30-from-26?replies=5#post-5462803

In short, disable any opcode cache, upgrade Akismet, and re-enable your cache. Alternatively, restarting Apache should accomplish the same thing.

As Christopher mentioned, restarting Apache solved the issue. Looks like the APC cache kept the old version of the PHP files in memory. After the Apache restart, I was able to Activate the plugin again ??