Why has a plugin not installed caused a fatal error?

Hi @bergstad, one possibility for how you might see an error about the Font Awesome plugin, despite not having the plugin installed, is that you have a theme or some other plugin installed that incorporates the Font Awesome plugin as a library.

If a theme or plugin has incorporated it as a library, then you’d still see “Font Awesome” under the settings menu in the admin dashboard, even if you don’t have it listed as a plugin on the plugins page.

If that’s the case, then identifying which theme or plugin is responsible would provide a clue toward resolving the error. For example, if that theme or plugin has integrated fully with the Font Awesome plugin’s deactivate and uninstall hooks, then deactivating and uninstalling that other theme or plugin should have the effect of cleaning up everything with the Font Awesome plugin. And then if you were to re-install/re-activate that other theme or plugin, it should have the effect of starting with a clean slate default configuration for the Font Awesome plugin as well.

Thank you,

I have suspected my premium theme ever since the error appeared but the theme author denies it cause they only have the FA library installed.

I have forwarded your reply to them.

Thnx.

This other issue may be related.

@bergstad maybe take a look at my thinking over there about the possible scenario of installing a theme that uses an older version of the plugin as a library, then install a newer version of the plugin directly, then uninstalling that newer version of the plugin. That’s a sequence of events that might create this scenario. Does that sound like what might have happened in your case?

I’m considering how to provide a solution for a corner case like this.

Hi @mlwilkerson .

I’m afraid it does not explain our error message.
Over the few months early 2022 we tested different premium themes and plugins that we needed for our website on a brand new install. Not at any point did we install FA our self.
When we had found the theme and plugins suitable for us we migrated the whole site so we had a fresh and clean install of “our product”.
We then spent 3 months editing posts, pages and graphich but at no point did we here install anything besides updating plugins already installed.
I honestly can not say what it was that even triggered this error message.

I received an update earlier today from the author of my premium theme.
They had a look at our website because of this and they say it was a problem with the plugin Booked (also installed with the theme) s? they deactivated and reactivated this plugin, and the error message disappeared.

Not sure if this helps you, but I am happy.

BR
Bergstad

Hello!

This thread was most helpful! Thank you so much!

I too encountered this same problem and I had the Booked plugin installed as well. I deactivated it, cleared the cache and re-activated it . Problem solved!

Thank you!

@sdonikian

Thank you for your comment. I also had the booked plugin installed. I followed what you wrote and it fixed my issue as well.