Rachel Vasquez

Ok thanks! I’ll see if I can work on converting the time to the WordPress timezone.

Yeah there’s a snafu on the site I’m working on where the wrong terms (duplicates basically) were assigned to posts. And we want to delete the duplicates but need to re-assign all the posts that have the duplicate terms, to the original terms. I was hoping this would help, but it doesn’t appear to work for me. It seems like it’s expecting the to/from terms to be from different taxonomy types OR perhaps there’s an issue because the “from” term does not have a parent whereas the “to” term does. I’m not sure if that’s confusing the plugin.

Thanks for the reply though. Will move onto other avenues.

So you’re saying that because the “attachment display settings” are specific to WordPress itself, that’s why I don’t see them in the media library window via Shortcake? Because Shortcake just uses it to select an attachment and excludes these options?

Hi marco licata,

So did your site at one point work and someone did something to it, and then it stopped working? What’s the last thing you remember happening (updates, changes etc.) before it stopped working?

If this is a self-hosted WordPress site, then you wouldn’t need to pay to re-install WordPress. Even a WordPress.com site that isn’t self-hosted is free. Hosting and a custom domain name, however, is not free.

However if your hosting or domain expired, you’d get a different error than this, so that’s not what’s happening here. My guess would be that your database got switched with a blank one somehow. Usually when setting up WordPress, you can either specify an existing database in the wp-config.php file or WordPress will create a blank database for you which then it prompts you to install and create a username/password etc.

I’d need more information for a more concrete answer. (Meaning if you could answer my first two questions)

You can also contact your hosting to confirm that nothing on their end has changed.

Hope that helps a bit.

If the problem resolves when switching to another theme, the problem is most likely something in your theme. Just to confirm, you can de-activate the plugins and re-activate one by one as well to see if it’s a combination of your theme and a specific plugin.

You’ll know it’s the theme as well if the same set of plugins work fine for Twenty-fourteen but not with your theme.

Does your local copy and subdomain match exactly as far as theme changes and plugins go? This includes the versions?

I hear FileZilla is free if you want to go that route and figure it out on your own.

I do agree on looking into other hosting options as well – the fact that they’re charging to reverse your site from a backup is not ideal. For hosting suggestions, I like WP Shout’s Hosting Article for 2014.

I hope everything was resolved. Good luck. ??

So the site is an older version now? What version is it? It’s probably a good idea to make a record of it from this point forward.

As far as the plugins go, you can see what plugins you have with your FTP, just log in and look for wp-content/plugins folder. Then you’ll see the names of the plugins but you won’t necessarily know which ones you had active at the time.

You can download the files from www.ads-software.com and on your FTP- replace the plugin folder in wp-content/plugins with the version you downloaded. If you already had Jetpack, you’ll most likely see that the folder you downloaded has the same name as the one already installed.

If your site is an older version, and you’re unable to do the plugin test where you de-activate all plugins because Jetpack is breaking things, you can manually de-activate plugins on your FTP by re-naming all of the plugin folders to something else. If you want to make it easier on yourself, you can name them with underscores in the beginning so it’s easier to change it back.

e.g. _akismet, _jetpack, _whatever

This will de-activate them on the dashboard forcefully because the name change will make WordPress lose track of it.

From that point when you overwrite Jetpack with your downloaded version, you should only be dealing with Jetpack being active.

You can also just re-name the current Jetpack with underscores like I suggested and just drop your downloaded folder right in.

If the problem is Jetpack, then with Jetpack active by itself, the errors will still be there. If the problem is not Jetpack, then your Jetpack fix with your now older WordPress should be fine. You can also test again by having Jetpack alone active, and switching to a Twenty-something theme. If everything works fine on that theme switch, then the issue might be your theme itself not getting along with Jetpack.

Once you’ve gone through that process with Jetpack, you can repeat these troubleshooting steps with other plugins.

Hope that helps! ?? This tutorial at the section where it says “How to update plugins manually using FTP client” might be useful as well. Good luck!

That’s fine, I once didn’t know what repo stood for either. There’s things we don’t know, including myself, but I’d like to try and help if you’re willing to continue.

Unfortunately if you prefer for someone to just complete the task for you however or do it with you side by side, then yes, you will likely have to hire someone for their time. Remember to never share your credentials or FTP with anyone unless you’ve hired them to help you and you’re confident they’re a trustworthy source.

If not, then you can try and resolve it on your own. I understand it can be overwhelming.

What steps have you completed so far?

You can also find out if your hosting company has backups – I know my hosting company regularly backs up my site so it’s possible that they can just revert the site back to a week or so ago. They should be able to provide that much if they are a good standard hosting company. That would revert the site in both the files as well as the database – in other words, everything will be reverted including the upgrade and your site content.

You can also upgrade plugins by looking for them in the WordPress plugin repo, downloading them, and replacing their folders in the wp-content/plugins folder if you can’t do it via the dashboard.

Make sure all plugins are deactivated when upgrading either on the dash or manually as I suggested with FTP.

What WordPress theme are you using? And which theme did you switch to?

Hi mamacastellanos,

First you will need to contact your hosting again or check your email to see if they’ve ever provided FTP credentials for you. Or some hosting companies have FTP on their own websites for you to use. FTP (file transfer protocol) is just a fancy program for you to be able to physically see your files on a server (online) where you can then do what you like to them as in edit, move them around, whatever’s needed.

If your hosting doesn’t have FTP on your hosting account dashboard, they should definitely have credentials you can use and you can download a free FTP software. I’m not sure whether you have a PC or Mac, but I user CyberDuck and Fetch. Also hear FileZilla is good too.

Once you have this program, you’d log in with the provided credentials and you can then see your actual files. Usually it’ll be in a www folder or a folder with your hosting account username – it really depends on how your hosting company set it up. Now this is where you’d need to troubleshoot your site. The PHP error you’re getting is probably due to your theme or a plugin.

The first thing I’d do is de-activate your plugins. If the problem goes away, one of them is the culprit. You’ll know by re-activating them one by one on your dashboard to see if the problem comes back.

The second thing I’d do is activate a Twenty-Thirteen/Fourteen/Twelve etc. theme on your dashboard and see if the error is still there. If it is with plugins off, then it’s something in your theme.

You can also debug by editing the wp-config.php file using your FTP. More about that here.

Using the debug feature might reveal more errors to help you hone in on what is really the problem. I usually fine that when I get an error pointing to a wp-includes/ or wp-admin folder, it doesn’t actually have to do with those folders, but something in the theme or plugins I’m using. And so if the only error you get points to wp-includes/wp-admin, this might not help but it’s worth a try if you’re willing to give it a try.

You don’t need to revert if you don’t want to since that sounds like what you’re trying to do via the FTP and trying to update with a zip. If your site is already updated, manually updating isn’t going to help unless your update went haywire part of the way. But it sounds like the update went fine and it’s just something broke after the update, correct?

Depending on your issue, you’d either need to just replace or update bad plugins (which you should make sure those are all up to date too because that might also be the issue) or need to post here again once you have a better idea where the error is coming from.

Also here’s the Common Installation Problems for WordPress as well as Common WordPress Errors. Hope that helps!

Hi again,

If these are all posts, would creating a menu on the dashboard help? On the sidebar, under Appearance > Menus, you can create links to these posts and also manually order them by dragging.

You would insert your menu or create locations for new menus using the wp_nav_menu function in your theme.

If you’re looking for filters instead, meaning the user chooses Spain as a category which then changes the results to posts for Spain, perhaps looking into a filter plugin might help. It kind of sounds like you don’t want a literal menu, but for the user to choose from one level before it dynamically changes it’s child items depending on what the user picked.

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/search-filter/

Hope that helps!

Hi ron regev,

For the built in WordPress players, it’s usually an embed code that WordPress inserts. They’re shortcodes in other words. And you can customize the width and height by adding the appropriate parameters to the shortcode.

There’s more about embeds here on the Codex and this is an example of a youtube video I inserted with the WordPress player when viewed on the text-editor’s “text” tab, not “visual”.

[embed width="123" height="456"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ[/embed]

Since the embeds are iframes, you won’t be able to change much via the Css although you can try with !important ( I wouldn’t advise this for future maintenance ), hence why I recommend taking advantage of the shortcodes.

It looks like someone on that external tutorial had some luck just setting a max-width 100% on the Css instead. I’d say that’s a better bet than using !important.

It also looks like there’s a way to set the widths via PHP as well. There’s an external tutorial on how to do it but it’s basically like this in your functions.php file:

if ( ! isset( $content_width ) ) $content_width = 600;

Hope that helps!

Hi rnmartiniz,

After taking a look at one of your posts, which I assume this is one, I’m just gonna throw some ideas out there and see if they help. ??

https://questicle.net/2014/03/754-zombie-nation.html

If you don’t want to change the titles or change the slugs to your posts, you can also just change the publish dates to them so that it either ascends or descends to the order you want. This is also assuming you’re using a WordPress function like wp-list_categories to take advantage of the orderby parameter that you can set to order by date asc/desc.

It’s a tedious task though. I did find a plugin however that lets you manually order your posts as well. You can give it a try or find another one that’s similar and works for you. However, be forewarned that the plugin, as this one says, may change dates anyway. Definitely back up your site before you install a plugin that might mess with your posts in a way you don’t want.

Order your posts manually – plugin

The last thing I could think of is perhaps writing the code where it orders not by date, not by name, and not by slug – so maybe a custom taxonomy?

I’d say the two “easiest” and most code-free solutions are to manipulate your post dates manually or try a plugin.

Hope that helps! Good luck.

Hi SianiB,

The reason you can’t carelessly replace the www folder it 1. most likely that folder doesn’t just contain the core files and the core files are all you’d need to revert your install to an earlier version. So you may break your site further if you overwrite the www folder completely. And 2. if the database was upgraded, and you do not have a copy of the old database, reverting the core files to an earlier version without doing the same to the database can break your site even further as well. That’s why I was asking about the prompt.

Sometimes if your database hasn’t updated in the process and that is what’s possibly breaking your site, you can log out and back in and it will prompt you. If it doesn’t, you can manually go to the url which will be something like this:

https://example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php

You can find more info on that on the WP Codex here.

So in theory, if the issue is that the upgrade didn’t complete due to the database, this should fix it. If not, then one of two things might’ve happened:

The upgrade did finish and something in your theme/plugins is breaking due to the upgrade. This is where I’d follow Tara’s suggestions to de-activate plugins and try a Twenty-something theme to troubleshoot. Also try setting your wp-config.php file where it has the debug line to false.

More on how to debug here on the WP Codex.

And the second thing that might’ve happened is the upgrade stopped mid-upgrade and has nothing to do with the database so then you’d just revert back by just taking the wp-includes/wp-admin folders from your saved copy and replacing the ones on your server. There’s a better step by step on how to manually upgrade, except in your case you’d be using the steps to revert on here on the Codex as well.

I hope one of these is the case.

You can also check the Codex’s Common Installation problems to see if anything there is helpful.

Good luck!

Ah okay, I was under the impression that maybe you wanted to manually get all the links and just make your own CSV. Like if you used Microsoft Excel or Mac’s Numbers, put all your data in an excel sheet, and then just export to CSV.

I’d aim to search for something will specifically export attachment posts types since all attachments in the media library are a post type. Or something that says it will export media without the content. I’ve been searching but I can’t seem to find a reliable plugin for this, hence why I suggested just creating your own CSV.

If you just need the urls and nothing else, it might be a bit heavy to install a CSV plugin that will export entire post content just for media urls. It’s tedious, but you may be better off manually creating your CSV and using the Admin Columns plugin just to make grabbing those urls for copy/paste easier.