This is the third time this has happened with the same site. The site owner makes a few normal edits to content then the next time she logs in almost all (save one text widget) is no longer displayed. The theme design is still there, it is just empty of content. I deactivate all plugins to no avail. The content is still in the DB just not displayed. I will reinstall the theme and all will be well again. Till she does some more edits. This is crazy! None of my other Atahualpa sites have behaved this way.

Last time this happened I took it as an opportunity to upgrade to 3.7.3. And I just upgraded to WP 3.3.1.

I'm at a loss. Anyone have ideas about what could be going on here? Some kind of corruption issue? How could I figure that out?

Thanks in advance,
Sharon

what is the url?
have you looked at the theme source to see if it has been hacked?

Should have included it in the first place!

dev2.horsemansarts.com

Thanks!

If you look at the source you will see it ends with

		<!-- / Left Sidebar -->
		
				

		<!-- Main Column -->
		<td id="middle">

This generally indicates that the content of the last post the user made is causing a problem. Many times this is because the user has copied from a Word document and pasted into the post. The problem is Word documents contained embedded word styling that cause WordPress to choke.

Go into the site and make the last couple of posts drafts and see what happens.

I set the last couple of months of posts to draft to see what would happen. But nothing did. What might the NEXT reason for that 'hanging' bit be? Thanks!

could also be the plugins in the left sidebar starting with the last one.

You can also add

define('WP_DEBUG', true);

to the wp-config.php to see what error is happening and/or look at the sites error log.

I added the line you suggested to the wp-config but must admit that I don't really know what to do with it. How do you see the results?

ok, now add

define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', true);

this should display the errors on the screen so we can see what error is happening.

I assume you mean add this to the wp-config? I did it. Where would errors display?
Thanks!

hmmm, they should go to the display. ok try two, substiture the following for those two lines

/**
* This will log all errors notices and warnings to a file called debug.log in
* wp-content (if Apache does not have write permission, you may need to create
* the file first and set the appropriate permissions (i.e. use 666) )
*/
define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', false);
@ini_set('display_errors',0);

view the site and then, with FTP go look at the wp-contents and see if the file 'debug.log' was created. if it was, paste the contents to a reply.

OK I'm circling back on this. I added the code per your suggestion but found no debug.log file. So I created one (in wp-content right?) and set permissions to 666. However, after refreshing the site nothing has been logged into the file. Could I have made some error wrt setting up wp-config?

It has taken me so long to get back to this because I thought it must have been resolved. The site was working fine for the last couple of weeks. The owner and I thought maybe it was something she had done, cutting and pasting content. But, yesterday it happened again and she SWEARS she added no content.

This is crazy!! Thanks for your help.
Sharon

remove any plugins in the left sidebar and see what happens

There aren't any plugins in the left sidebar?

Try installing Google Libraries plugin

What is happening is the site is built till it gets to the

		<!-- Main Column -->
		<td id="middle">

and there is nothing after that.

That tells me it is trying to process the left sidebars and then the first post but something is causing an error at this point and wordpress is getting a fatal error.

the sites error.log should show this error, but you have to find this file and some hosts won't let you look at it because all theri sites are dumped into the same one.

what could cause this? MS Word code in a post, a plugin, an undiscovered bug in Atahualpa or WordPress.

what to do? First, disable ALL plugins and see if the site comes back
second, make the last few posts DRAFTs to see if it is one of them
third, talk to your host and find the errror.log that will tell where the error is happening.

Originally Posted by Jam

Try installing Google Libraries plugin

What does that do?

Juggledad,
I've disabled everything and also set the last two months worth of posts to draft. Still no site. I will look into the error log.

I noticed something else that is out of place. There is a small bit of margin now appearing above the menu. I didn't put it there! I used Firebug to see what the setting was and can't seem to figure out where that margin setting is happening. Thoughts?

Thanks,
Sharon

send me a PM with a admin ID/PW

Not sure if it will help, but clicked on "Posts" and got this error on otherwise white screen:

XML Parsing Error: XML or text declaration not at start of entity
Location: http://dev2.horsemansarts.com/feed/
Line Number 2, Column 1:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
^

and Google Libraries solved a slightly similar problem for one of my sites recently, where content was missing from Dashboard but still visible on the site. I know its a long shot but worth a try. Google Libraries bypasses local scripts and uses Google Libraries versions which may avoid a javascript conflict causing your sites issue.

Where do you have the 'atahualpa373' folder located? Is it in the 'wp-content/themes' folder or is it in the 'wp-contents/themes/atahualpa' folder?

if it is in the 'wp-contents/themes/atahualpa' folder, move it to the 'wp-contents/themes' folder.

Originally Posted by juggledad

Where do you have the 'atahualpa373' folder located? Is it in the 'wp-content/themes' folder or is it in the 'wp-contents/themes/atahualpa' folder?

if it is in the 'wp-contents/themes/atahualpa' folder, move it to the 'wp-contents/themes' folder.

Atahualpa373 is already in the wp-contents/themes folder (not in wp-contents/themes/atahualpa).

Sharon

Couldn't stand it. I just replaced the theme with a fresh copy and voila all is well again. But for how long? I don't get it!

I hate to tell you but you have been hacked. I took a look at the other themes and every php file in every theme has been altered and contains the obfuscated code at the end. It will only be a day of two before the fresh copy gets hacked again.

This could extent to all the WP files also (can't tell unless I had FTP access.)

report this to your host.

look at the files with FTP to see what the modified date is this will tell you when the hack happened and you can check to access logs to see if they were modified via ftp.

read this post: How to Cope with a Hacked Site

Some of the things you need to do are change every password
cpanel
ftp - delete any users you don't recognize
wordpress - every admin user - FOR EVERY SITE YOU HOST
mysql

make sure every computer that accesses the sites via an admin ID has up to date virus/malware software and has been scanned.

replace every theme, plugin and all the wordpress code

grab the log files to see if you can figure out how you got hacked

it is a messy time consuming job cleaning out a hack

also check your .htaccess files for something like this

 php_value auto_append_file /home/path_to_/public_html/websitename/Thumbs.db

and remove it if you find it


===========
some references
===========
http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/268083#post-1065779
http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com...-installation/
http://ottopress.com/2009/hacked-wordpress-backdoors/

http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress

Where do I find log files?

Thanks!

depends on your host...