I've lot my foot again, because of a bad widget?
 

What is it with me and the footer? Second time it's disappeared.

We have the seeclickfix.com map running on a Page. It lets users put a marker on the map, showing a pothole or other infrastructure problem, and local officials are alerted.

I used the seeclickfix.com logo in the right sidebar, linking the image to the Page where our map is. I use Any Code to make the widget. Soon after that, I noticed that the footer was gone from every post and Page except for the map page.

I also see that the Save Changes button is gone from the right sidebar widgets area. Even if I want to remove that widget, I can't!

The very last thing in the source code of pages missing the footer is this:
, which also makes me think a widget is the problem.

Help!

Hi Paulae,
Didi you try it with another theme to see if it is a Atahualpa/widget vrs widget/wordpress issue? Looking at the page source, you can clearly see it is a issue where the page generation is getting stopped by something. I didn't see anythiny in the 'Activity' log in Safari, but you might be able to see something in the server error logs.

If you let me know what widgets you have installed, I could try it in my local testbed.
Paul

Paulae
Check out this thread http://iamtgc.com/2008/12/03/how-to-...-in-wordpress/
Paul

While trying to figure out a problem of my own, I just stumbled across the wp-pear-debug plugin (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pear-debug/) which may be helpful in figuring out your problem. Note: it only works in PHP5. It has the ability to only do the debugging for the Admin!
Paul

Thanks for the links, JD. I'm a bit skeered of digging in the database, but that may be what's required.

Did you try the debugging plugin? That's scary too!

Hi Paulae.
I did play with the debugging plugin and it looks like it could be helpful since you can set it so the debugging only hapens for the administrator - your users woon't see anything. One of the nice things is the trace of sql calls. By looking at them, you might be able to see where the problem is happening, i.e. the module that is choking.

Have you looked at the access and error logs on the server to see if there are any messages?
Paul

Paulae
I just noticed in your page source, the last thing processed was the Right Sidebar Archives. In the widgets, what comes after that on the right sidbar?? Try taking it out and see what happens.
Paul

I noticed that too. The weird thing was that in the right sidebar, there was no Save Changes button, so even if I knew which widget was the villain, I couldn't get rid of it!

I saw that odd in the source code of my pages, so I looked at my plugins. There was one called Executable PHP, which I had used for something a while back, but wasn't using now. I deactivated it, and guess what? All is back to normal. All I can think is that there was some kind of conflict with the very existence of that plugin and another PHP widget I'm running.

Very touchy stuff!

Glad you found out what was happening. Since Executable PHP actually executes PHP code in widgets, I can see where there could be a conflict between it and another widget.

Right, but it wasn't being used in any widgets at the moment, so I don't see why it didn't just sit quietly in the background. :o

With the EXEC-PHP plugin installed, it is going to be looking for PHP code to execute in Post, Pages and Text widgets. It could be that another widget is producing PHP code in a post or widget and Exec-PHP is trying to run it but something is incomplete and blap, something fails and you end up with incomplete page. Without knowing what error is occuring, it's impossible to say weither it is the EXEC-PHP plugin at fault or Widget 'X'.

You might be able to find out if you looked at the error log on the server.

But it is good to know that it's not happening anymore!!