rswick

Regarding this suggestion:

>>7. Contact your hosting provider support team for a specific direction to help you with your specific server setup.

I had a long conversation with my provider’s technical support. The outcome was that we changed the cPanel email routing from “local mail exchanger” to “remote mail exchanger” and downgraded PHP from 8.0 to 7.4. The support person was certain we had found the solution.

However, after the phone call the problem resumed. Sending of emails is intermittently failing with the “could not instantiate mail function.” error, as shown by WP Mail Logging plugin.

I have also re-activated Akismet Anti-Spam plugin. As that was not the cause of this problem.

My previous update was incorrect. Though Akismet Anti-Spam plugin is Inactive, the “could not instantiate mail function” error is still occurring. Though less frequently. As shown by WP Mail Logging log.

FYI. I disabled Akismet Anti-Spam 5.0.2 plugin. After I did that the emails started working every time, instead of intermittently failing.

I think the problem may have started with Akismet 5.0, which I installed on August 4, 2022. That release is described as, “Added a new feature to catch spammers by observing how they interact with the page.”

WP Mail Logging shows only emails marked as “[spam]” give the “could not instantiate mail function” error. Also, some emails marked as “[spam]” do NOT give the error.

So the problem is with Akismet Anti-Spam 5.0.2.

Regarding:

>>8. Search for your error message in the WordPress community to see if other users have had similar issues and how they resolved them.

I did this before I posted to the forum. None of the posts from other users mentioned an *intermittent* issue and the resolutions did not seem relevant to my situation.

Regarding:

>>7. Contact your hosting provider support team for a specific direction to help you with your specific server setup.

I can do that also, but was hoping for help from this forum. The problem is right now contained to WordPress.

Specifically, as mentioned, is there a level of logging or error reporting that I can enable to understand better what is going wrong?

Regarding:

>> 3. Verify that your email server is running correctly and configures to accept emails from your web server.

4. Verify the SMTP credentials being used and ensure they have the correct permissions.

5. Check your DNS or MX records of the email address you are sending emails from and ensure they are configured correctly.

6. Test your email-sending functionality using a different mailer, such as the PHP mail() function or a third-party library like PHPMailer or SwiftMailer.`

<<

As mentioned, the emails fail only *intermittently*. They also work. So I do not see how these apply.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by rswick.

Thanks!

Regarding:

>>2. Inspect the Sendmail script to ensure that it is correctly configured and that it is being invoked correctly.

I don’t know which script is the sendmail script. How would I determine that? And how would I know if it is correctly configured and being invoked correctly?

Please note that the problem is intermittent. To me, that means the cause has to be something intermittent as well. I believe scripts are *fixed* – meaning they do not change.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 10 months ago by rswick. Reason: formatting incorrect

Thanks for the reply. Regarding:

>>1. Check the web server and PHP error logs for any messages related to the email function. This can help to identify any issues with the web server or PHP configuration.

I have already looked at ~/public_html/error_log and ~/public_html/wp-admin/error_log. Are there any other log files I should look at?

Thanks! I did the manual update again – described here: https://www.ads-software.com/support/article/updating-wordpress/#manual-update.

Now the website is up again.

I think I may have forgotten step 1, #7 the first time. Not sure.

We DO have a backup, BTW.

Thanks for this. But I believe you’re describing the manual update I mentioned in my original post(?) – I tried that before I posted this question. See the link to the procedure in that post.

I can do it again, but I guess I would prefer to spend the time installing a previous version. Any suggestions on that?

How do I use my backup to downgrade back to WordPress 5.9.3?

Is there an article about how to do that?

(I found this one, but that requires a working WP dashboard.)

Thanks!

Here are the files in the themes directory:
`m2rvyvfwf5tw@p3plcpnl0955 [~/public_html/wp-content/themes]$ ll
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 5 m2rvyvfwf5tw m2rvyvfwf5tw 4096 Jan 5 11:36 ./
drwxr-xr-x 12 m2rvyvfwf5tw m2rvyvfwf5tw 4096 Jan 4 2021 ../
-rw-r–r– 1 m2rvyvfwf5tw m2rvyvfwf5tw 28 Jan 2 2018 index.php
drwxr-xr-x 12 m2rvyvfwf5tw m2rvyvfwf5tw 4096 Dec 27 23:19 neve-broken/
drwxr-xr-x 7 m2rvyvfwf5tw m2rvyvfwf5tw 4096 Nov 15 12:03 twentytwentythree/
drwxr-xr-x 7 m2rvyvfwf5tw m2rvyvfwf5tw 4096 Nov 24 17:21 twentytwentytwo/

I cannot display the dashboard, nor the website.

Here’s the error from ~/public_html/wp-admin/error_log when I try to refresh the website wp-admin page:

[05-Jan-2023 17:46:54 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Class "WP_Theme_JSON_Data" not found in /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php:183
Stack trace:
#0 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php(559): WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver::get_core_data()
#1 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/script-loader.php(3205): WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver::get_merged_data()
#2 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/script-loader.php(3401): {closure}()
#3 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(308): {closure}()
#4 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(332): WP_Hook->apply_filters()
#5 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php(517): WP_Hook->do_action()
#6 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-settings.php(609): do_action()
#7 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-config.php(101): require_once('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#8 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-load.php(50): require_once('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#9 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-admin/admin.php(34): require_once('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#10 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-admin/index.php(10): require_once('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#11 {main}
  thrown in /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php on line 183

I’m looking at the file ~/public_html/error_log. There are a lot of errors. The most recent one is:

[05-Jan-2023 13:26:14 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Class "WP_Theme_JSON_Data" not found in /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php:183
Stack trace:
#0 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php(559): WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver::get_core_data()
#1 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/script-loader.php(3205): WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver::get_merged_data()
#2 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/script-loader.php(3401): {closure}()
#3 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(308): {closure}()
#4 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(332): WP_Hook->apply_filters()
#5 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php(517): WP_Hook->do_action()
#6 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-settings.php(609): do_action()
#7 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-config.php(101): require_once('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#8 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-load.php(50): require_once('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#9 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-login.php(12): require('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#10 {main}
  thrown in /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php on line 183
[05-Jan-2023 13:26:20 UTC] PHP Fatal error:  Uncaught Error: Class "WP_Theme_JSON_Data" not found in /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php:183
Stack trace:
#0 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php(559): WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver::get_core_data()
#1 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/script-loader.php(3205): WP_Theme_JSON_Resolver::get_merged_data()
#2 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/script-loader.php(3401): {closure}()
#3 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(308): {closure}()
#4 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(332): WP_Hook->apply_filters()
#5 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/plugin.php(517): WP_Hook->do_action()
#6 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-settings.php(609): do_action()
#7 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-config.php(101): require_once('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#8 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-load.php(50): require_once('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#9 /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-login.php(12): require('/home/m2rvyvfwf...')
#10 {main}
  thrown in /home/m2rvyvfwf5tw/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-theme-json-resolver.php on line 183

Thanks. I have access to the Linux server, but not sure where to look for the relevant server error log?

I updated to PHP 8.0.

This did not make any difference.

Is there an error log I can examine somewhere that would help point to what is wrong?