HELP... site problems after trying 3.5.3!!!
 

Sequence of events
- I created a 'sliding door option for an Atahuapha site at
http://www.whiteravencenter.org/
almost a year ago, posted it here, and installed it on on other sites as well, like
http://www.raceskitrader.com/
- updated Wordpress to 3.0 for both sites- everything worked, including the sliding door menu, but
encountered problems on the White Raven site like others were having using Atahualpa with the
new 'draft post' features, came to this forum where it was suggested that AT 3.5.3 had solved
some things. (Running AT 3.4.9 at the time)
- installed AT 3.5.3 and immediately the sliding door menu disappeared.
- not acceptable, so rolled back to AT 3.4.9, sliding door menu still disappeared.
- rolled back to AT 3.4.1, still broken - sliding door menu still disappeared.

Not a WP 3.0 problem, since the code still works fine running 3.0 and AT 3.4.4 on the second site.
I've tried to compare the working site with the broken one, the code I added (entirely in AT supplied windows, core files never touched). looks identical.

I did do a backup, but my host doesn't provide phpMyAdmin installed, and I haven' had to install or use it in several years - not sure I remember how to do it and meanwhile the site is seriously crippled...

Please help! -- Jack

Is that a maintenance mode plugin running on the whiteravencenter site? I had trouble with one of those at one point. The ski race site did appear eventually for me just now.

I'd disable the maintenance mode plugin and any caching plugins you have running. I use WP-DB Manager plugin, so you could try installing that and doing a DB repair. Or hire Juggledad or Larry to help you. I know this is scary, but don't worry too much. Your stuff is all still there. Dump your browser cache too.

Yes maintenance mode is running.. sorry, I'll take it off for a bit but I don't want people trying to use it.

I've never had trouble with this maintenance mode plugin, no caching plugins.
Cleared the cache several times...

I also use WP-DB Manager and tried to do a repair. No change.

AT 3.5.3 installed on WP 3.0 did something to the database that I can't repair until I get a copy of phpMyAdmin installed (which my host, otherwise a perfect place to host all my sites, doesn't provide an installed phpMtAdmin) and I haven't done this installation for a couple of years and am going nuts getting it working.

There has to be some interaction between WP 3.0 and AT 3.5.3 that messed up my code added to the ATO panels in Style & Edit Header and Add HTML/CSS Inserts. The failure did not occur until I installed (using FileZilla) and activated AT 3.5.3

Jack

Remove or rename the atahualpa folder in the themes folder. This should cause the default theme to run again. If you install each version of atahualpa in it's own folder, you can swap back and forth.

Going from 3.4.9 to 3.5.3 doesn't do anything signafant to the db

Renaming folders is not the issue here - this site is running, it's just that since I first activated AT 3.5.3 to try to get around a WP 3.0/AT 3.4.9 problem, the custom header code I added a year ago through ATO panels suddenly disappeared.

The problem is I believe is some interaction between AT 3.5.3 new WP 3.0 scheme. All the rest of the site and all the plugins installed work fine - it's just my own menu solution that has worked for a year (and still works on a site I haven't upgraded to 3.5.3 yet) fails to get rendered and is replaced by a strange vertical menu. I have other sites that do not use my custom menu running AT 3.5.3 on WP 3.0 with no problems either...

The weird thing is that whatever AT 3.5.3 did when it was activated cannot be corrected by rolling back to previous releases of AT - (I've tried 3.4.1 and 3.4.9, both of which worked perfectly prior to touching 3.5.3, leading me to believe that AT 3.5.3 did something to the database that WP 3.0 was using. I'm struggling to recover my last database backup but am having other issues getting phpMyAdmin installed and working to try to fix whatever happened to the DB.. All in all, it's a mess and doesn't give me much confidence in either AT 3.5.3 - at least on WP 3.0, and you have sent any options in ATO that might have to do with menus.

Jack

First off that is not what I'd call a site down, problem with the way it's acting, yes, site down no.

Did you apply the menu bug fix that has been in the 'new versions' forum since Wp 3.0 came out?

True, not totally down, but from the site owner's point of view, broken and unusable.

I just applied the patch to 3.5.3, and no change. Incidentally, if I install previous releases of AT (e.g., 3.4.4, the sliding door menu is still missing, but the logo displays correctly - if I install 3.5.3, it is not able to load the logo image - I get the alt string instead. Not sure why one release can access the logo and the new release can't... I'll check the page source and try to solve that one by verifying the file paths specified. Would 3.5.3 require a full (or different) file access path than previous releases? I thought specifying the logo image was pretty cut and dried.

Meanwhile, none of this explains why the site worked on WP 3.0 running AT 3.4.4, but after installing AT 3.5.3, prior releases now exhibit the same failure of a feature that worked prior to touching 3.5.3...

Finally got a copy of phpMyAdmin working, So I hope I can clear this up temporarily with a DB restore.
Sheeesh!!! What a day!

Jack

OK -- a partial answer to things missing - I'm beginning to agree with JD that at3.5.3 didn't mess with the WO database but... in the course of trying out AT 3.5.3 a bunch if files went missing.

I implemented this sliding door thingy a year ago and since then have done many upgrades of AT as Flynn released them. In every case, whether it was with a click on the admin page or an FTP copy into Wordpress, everything worked from release to release - until I got to 3.5.3 and discovered that:

- the sliding door menu was now missing - no clues
- the logo image was missing (the alt message hinted at a missing or unreachable file)
- there was a sort of small vertical menu of the pages formerly in the sliding doors appeared
where the logo should have been displayed.
- took a while to notice, but the favicon was missing as well

Because when I rolled back to a previous release of AT (3.4.4) things still did not work, I jumped to the conclusion that trying out 3.5.3 had munged the database, since that was the only thing I could think of that was common to different versions of the template. However, when I tracked down why the logo image wasn't displayed, I discovered it was missing from the ../theme/atahualpa/images directory. OK, so it didn't get copied during the update, although that had never happened with any previous upgrades. I then looking for it in the template that was replaced by 3.5.3, and it was missing there too!!! I had to go two releases back to find it. When copied into place in the correct 3.5.3 directory, the Logo reappeared.

I found the missing favicon file as well, and it turns out the entire directory with my sliding door stuff went missing as well. Actually, I still haven't tracked down all the bits a pieces, but I'm holding off on a DB restore from backup until I check some more.

Now I have to say I've never has this kind of problem with any AT upgrade in the several years I've used it for a number of sites, several are using the sliding door trick. I'm still trying to reconstruct what happened...

Jack

If the sliding door folder was inside the earlier ATA folder, then of course you'd have to move it when you change themes, if you were using a relative path to point to it. Certainly, any time you change theme versions you have to move your header image and favicon into their proper slots. This is something I wish Flynn would fix in a future version: have these images reside outside the theme's folders.

when you in upgraded to 3.5.3 - how did you do it? Did you install it to it's own folder (ie atahualpa353) in the themes folder or did you just replace the previous version with the contents of the new version.

Anything you add to th eatahualpa theme folder is your responsibility to copy to the new release. Doing an automatic upgrade via WordPress causes ALL the files in the theme folder to be deleted before the new version is copied in.