Upgrade caused loss of Categories

Michael,

What you’re describing is what happened to me when I forced a permissions downgrade on the DB user. Hmm.

Just a clarification request re: plugins. I did realize that I had forgotten I had Askimet installed. Should this be deactivated prior to upgrade or removed altogether?

RE: database. My issue seems to be code related only. The info is still there in the db. The fact that it is independent of the theme (I switched between my chosen theme and the WP default and had the same issue) places the issue with the WP core code. This upgrade issue is an interesting possibility. My db indicates it’s all set (6124). The only thing I can think of that may have been an anomaly is the plugin.

Lorax,

Any time you do an upgrade you need to have all plugins turned off. I would think that by following the instructions above, your database will get upgraded properly.

@lorax. Yes deactivate ALL plugins. They don’t necessarily need to be deleted after deactivating, but you do need to make sure you have up-to-date versions of each plugin.

If you have the wp_categories table, that mean the database upgrade really didn’t WORK. Try the avenue suggested above by DavidB to force the database upgrade.

Oops, see David’s got it covered ??

Thanks guys. Will try by weeks end and report back.

Hmmm… well I deactivated the Plugins and then uploaded the update and darn…. lost my categories and blogroll again!! This is very annoying since I seem to be the only one who experiences the issue.

Where to go from here?

Post your email here and I’ll contact you for a backup of your database and I’ll do an upgrade from whatever version you are at, to 2.3.2, to see what the hecks the issue!

I’ll moderate your email when I see it…

[moderated email address-Email sent to lorax]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh….. found it. Michael, you’re not going to believe this – but actually you will.

The whole issue had to do with two lines of code that I SHOULDN’T have left alone.

wp-config.php

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');

Removed these and I got my categories and blog-roll back. Note to self (and anyone else who reads this). Do NOT use the famous 5 Minute install/upgrade as your guide for upgrading. Read actual installation instructions. They say quite clearly to remove these lines (unless you really do need them – which most of us don’t).

My apologies.

I have upgraded 11 installations this week (about 35 more to go) and I have never removed those from the configs and I have not lost categories, either. I doubt that was the issue, you must have something else going on that caused it to break with the presence of those two lines.

Well I can’t explain it then. Michael and I tried several different things including complete fresh installations, importing the SQL dump files and changing the transfer type. None of which worked. The only thing I did differently was to remove those lines. In fact, I just added them back in and uploaded that file again. Categories and blogroll dissapear. Took them out and uploaded. Everything is back to normal.

added

Adding DB_COLLATE and DB_CHARSET to the wp-config.php file, for an existing blog, can cause problems — as Ryan Boren says, “your queries will go boom!”

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Editing_wp-config.php

My issue is similar. No categories after upgrade to 2.3.2. All posts are now listed as “uncategorized.” I can’t add them under Manage > Categories. I get this error: Something strange happened. Try refreshing the page.

When I refresh the page, nothing happens.

When I try to add a category from the Post page, it immediately shows up, but if I try to add another, it replaces the first one with the new one.

I haven’t looked at the database yet to see if the categories are still in there. I assume they are.

I just find it strange considering that I’ve used the exact same version, same plugins, everything to upgrade 5 other wordpress blogs this past week and none of them had this problem.

Hi guys, I am having the same problem as well.

I have deleted all my old 2.2 files and uploaded every single file to 2.3.2 and ran the db upgrade but everything is still a no-go.

I do not have a backup, but I don’t mind losing my categories, I’ll just slowly add them back again one by one.

Problem is, because it gives me the same old “Fatal error: Call to undefined function _get_category_hierarchy() in… ” error, I cannot even delete my existing categories or even, for that matter, create new ones to re-add them!

Could anyone help me out here?

Hi there. Same issue as allyanders mentioned. Categories gone, can’t add new ones (besides, that “Error message” is absolutely useless, it adds no information about the problem. Recode maybe?).
I’m rather concerned about the fact that I no longer can add categories. This means there’s something not working the way it should, even though it messed up the old categories.
Btw. is there some scheme or list with which one could compare DB-Structure roughly to figure out if it’s been ‘tweaked’ correctly by the upgrade process?

Is anyone addressing this problem or does some guru have a solution at hand? Would be great.

@lorax — good work on finding that problem — though that would suggest that at one time your blog was at a pre-2.2 version, and that you added those two define statements to your wp-config.php file (or you used a new wp-config.php file and put your DB_NAME etc in that new file). Blogs upgraded from pre 2.2 should not have those define statements–and they should continue to NOT have those define statements.

@allyanders — I would consider restoring your database to pre 2.3.2 version and trying the upgrade again, with all plugins deactivated.

@djspinnet — still would guess you do not have a completely intact set of 2.3.2 files on your host. I’d redo Steps 7 and 8 of Upgrading WordPress Extended. Also review Uploading WordPress to a remote host and make sure you are uploading files in ASCII mode.

@gliv — same advice as allyanders. Also, it is difficult to ‘compare’ your db structure from pre-2.3 to 2.3 as the categories, post2cat, and link2cat tables were transformed into the terms, term_relationships, and term_taxonomy tables. Here’s the pre-2.3 database descriptions and here’s the current database description.