Warning: file_exists()

That looks like something within your host/server setup or WP configuration. Have you tried entering “open_basedir restriction in effect” into a search engine? There’s a ton of posts, including some from within the WP community, about that message and problems installing or uploading files.

While I understand that may be the case Jo, as I also had looked it up before opening a forum thread, that simply doesn’t apply to my issue. The dilemma is that I receive this error (or an error like it) from no other plugin or facet of my wordpress instillation despite all of my other plugins and content. It’s unusual that the Custom Dashboard Help plugin readme page specifically, would be making a call to a php that’s apparently outside of it’s allowed directories. And it’s especially unusual that the director would be “wp-content/plugins/custom-dashboard-help/includes/Jo_Landers_WP_Plugin_Admin/admin.php/markdown-converter-plus/markdown-converter-plus.php” as I mentioned previously, because even if I had Markdown_Converter_Plus installed which I don’t, that certainly wouldn’t be the correct location of it.

So I’m thinking there’s probably at least a slight chance that there is a technical problem here that I am not in control of.

The “open_basedir restriction” is specific to your hosting setup, and affects how files need to be included and loaded by other files and/or what the allowable ‘include’ path on your server is. Since the error you’re reporting has to do with how files are called, loaded and/or included, I really do think that’s the issue.

The only calls to markdown converter is an ‘if file exists’ or an ‘if class exists’ to see if the markdown converter plugin is available, during which the plugin checks a specific file path – only at run-time if requested (not during initialization, to avoid code bloat) and loads the file if it exists and is needed. Look at /includes/Jo_Landers_WP_Plugin_Admin/admin.php and you can see the calls in the function show_text_file(). The plugin should create a nicely formatted readme page if the code is available; otherwise it should just display the text file. If you disable the function call, you would have to view the file the same as any other plugin, in the WP editor or by downloading and opening with a text editor,

The code hasn’t been changed in a few years and nobody else has reported this error during that time. So either it is something specific to your setup, or I’ll be seeing more reports of this same error very soon b/c the plugin is using newly-deprecated code that no longer works as expected. But until/unless others are reporting the same issue or I’m able to replicate the same error myself, I have to consider it something specific to your installation.

You could try going into /includes/functions_admin.php and comment out echo $this->show_text_file(); or replace it with echo "please view the readme file using the plugin editor"; or something similar. If you do that, please update this thread to let me know if it worked. Since the function is only to display the readme file, it shouldn’t affect the core functionality of the plugin.