Shape 5

Hello,
I recently installed CR Version: 2.0 on my WordPress 3.5.2 / 3.6 site(I've tried both versions) and immediately upon activation of the theme it breaks the backend (wp-admin) with a "connection was reset" apache error. (front end still displays, and with CR theme, but obviously not customized/coherent).

My site is old & has been working for years with alternate templates, and immediately starts working again when i remove CR from active status. Unfortunately don't see any other advice/requirements from your install page : http://www.shape5.com/demo/index.php?wp/corporate-response

This is on a private dev server, PM'ed Tristan the details, but would appreciate some help figuring out the conflict...

Thanks!
B

Can you enable WP_DEBUG (http://codex.wordpress.org/Debugging_in_WordPress) and let me know what errors you get (if any)?

It would also be a good idea to make sure you are running the latest version of PHP.  If your server has error logging, it would really help to know if there are any server errors connected to that Apache error.

Hi again,
As it's a server reset, there's no page to render on the backend.
Frontend shows I''ve got an Undefined index: enable_css on my widgets_ob_page plugin.

I've been trying to disable/remove non-critical plugins, but no joy yet.
What would you recommend next?

Thanks,

Are you using a server stack like WAMP/MAMP/XAMPP/LAMPP? 

Is there any way you can test on a different server?  I've never seen an issue like yours, and I'm sure if other people were having it, there would be more threads about it.

Is there a server log that can tell what happens immediately before the crash?

It's effectively LAMP, but freeBSD (better anyway).
php 5.4.7
mysql 5.5.28
apache 2.2.23
It's not a problem with the server.
I'm curious if you have a list of known plugin compatibility problems?
I sent you logins, you're welcome to poke around.
Thanks,

I haven't heard of any compatibility problems. 

Have you tried any of the other responsive releases to see if it's only Corporate Response having the issue?

If it's not an issue with the server, I would expect that you wouldn't be the only person having the problem; so far, nobody else has posted a similar or related issue. 

This seems to me like there's some general incompatibility with some plugin i've added over the years.Clearly it's not a straight server problem or else I would have had the same issues with my original theme.

From that, I don't quite have the expertise to help diagnose what exactly the problem is and have come here looking for help from the 1 plugin(template) that absolutely and fatally breaks the box.

If i had the full working knowledge of php & JS & your theme I wouldn't need you guys would I?
Now I've been trying to disable plugins and work through this as any sysadmin would do, but I'm also trying to find the most effective way to diagnose and fix the issue,and as the creators of the thing, that's where I thought you'd come in.

As it's been a week, already with only getting asked questions that could have easily been answered with the information provided here & logins provided privately, I'm looking for a little more help than I've seen so far. With your superior knowledge of the template and what it needs, can you spend just a little longer than the 30 second replies once a day to help me diagnose the problem?
If for some reason you can't host file my server, i'm happy to provide a list of plugins or work to put this on a public domain, but I've never seen WP cause a unloadable page without quite a broken plugin/theme/etc. (and again, to belabor the point, my site works 100% with a Heavy theme from Pagelines (PlatformPro), so it's not just the server)
So what do I have to do to get a little more help here?

A list of plugins would definitely help.  And it would really help if there was a way you could duplicate the site on a server I could access without editing my hosts file.  As much as I wish I could migrate to 100% Linux, I'm stuck using Windows for now, and there are multiple reasons why host file manipulation isn't currently an option.

I'm sorry if you feel like I'm not putting in enough effort to try to support your problem; I'm the only WP person that does any work for Shape 5.  Not only do I provide forum support, I do all the WP programming, and I have my own company (Shape 5 is a client, not an employer).  While your problem is definitely important, I've recently had a lot of time wasted on the forums by people who can't be bothered to use the search or want me to support non-Shape5 products; I think that has caused a little "burn-out" on the support side of things.  I will do my best to make sure that doesn't happen anymore.

If you will be active for another couple hours, I will try to actively work with you to solve the problem.

Again, sorry for not being as involved as I should.  Let's get this fixed for you today if possible.

UPDATE:  Good news!  I managed to find a Firefox extension that was able to simulate a hosts file edit, so I can see your site.

Being able to see it doesn't really help me any though.  Without FTP access I can't really do anything if the admin keeps timing out.  Are you absolutely certain that the server is resetting?  I see that there are a lot of errors from badly coded plugins; I suggest disabling the plugins causing the errors (renaming their folders in the plugins directory will force-disable them), and seeing if that fixes anything.  One of the errors is caused by the "widgets on pages" plugin...  you almost definitely don't need that plugin, as there are more than enough widget positions available to place things in, and you can use Widget Context (Bugfix version) (http://www.shape5.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,75/topic,30963.0/) to make them only show on specific pages.

I still suggest trying to duplicate the site on a "real" server to see if the problem persists.  Sometimes stacks like LAMP/MAMP/XAMPP/etc have issues that a dedicated server won't have.  It could be possible that your dev stack is resource-limited in a way that is preventing some critical process from finishing.

Hi again Tristan,
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, I've been adding/removing plugins for a few days now just trying to get into the backend. (regardless of what the frontend shows)
I haven't found any plugin yet otherwise killing the admin section, but I have well and truly broken some enhanced functionality for the moment.
I can get you FTP in a bit, I just have to install one. (as sysadmin, I just scp & work as root when needed.)
In the meantime, the CR theme is active and you should have the user/pass. Once entered, it will reset the page.
And yes, this does me the /wp-admin/index.php shows fine, but then when session-ed it breaks? not sure yet if that's significant.

Edit: Thanks again for looking into this, and when you're ready, i can remove the theme to show you backend logs in just fine otherwise.

Just a thought, but could you try disabling all plugins (just rename the plugins directory to something else, you may have to create a new plugins folder temporarily).  That should help clarify if it's even an issue with a plugin or something that's only theme related.  If it's theme only, then I'm extremely surprised that nobody else has had the same issue.

Done. (renamed plugin directory & created a new, empty one)
And you'll notice that if you were already logged in, it immediately works.
Otherwise, feel free to login and you'll see it works. I'll have your ftp in just a few more minutes. I'm semi-side tracked <sigh>
(which is why I'm leaning to some incompatibility with your theme, and not blaming the theme outright, I just don't know what causes the issue)

I completely understand being side-tracked...  happens to me all the time.

Now that it's working, what we can do is restore the plugins folder the way it was, and re-enable 1 plugin at a time to see which one(s) the problem is caused by.  Once that's narrowed down, we can try to see why the "conflict" exists in the first place.

At least now we know it is definitely a conflict with another plugin.

EDIT:  It appears that now I'm getting a 403 (Forbidden) issue when I try to access your server.

EDIT2: Now it appears to be down completely...

I moved the plugins directory back, and Immediately it broke the backend again.
if this kept them all active, what step am i missing to deactivate first?
i'd think i'd have to deactivate your theme, then deactivate the plugins, then reactivate your theme & go from there?
Other thoughts?

EDIT: Dev server, one of our other guys broke something.
Count to 60 (feel free to help another) and we'll be all set.

EDIT2: back now.

WP automatically deactivates all plugins when the files are missing and won't re-activate them automatically, so even when you restore the files, they should stay deactivated.

I just visited the "plugins" page in the admin, and got the message that it deactivated them all because they're missing, so maybe that's the missing step.  You should be able to restore the files again now.

Ah Hah!
Ok, you saw the message, that make sense.
it all should be as we want it now. (plugins folder w/ lots of crap & your CR theme active)
Thanks

I'm not seeing the plugins listed on the plugins page, but let's try updaing WP to 3.6 as well...  it won't let me do it automatically through the admin because you have PHP file operations disabled, but you can probably do it if you follow the steps and enter access info.

Yes, I'm usually the manual update type. that way if things break I know who to blame.
I'm just finishing the package install of an ftp for you then i'll grab the 3.6 files and apply. I have done this ~1.5 weeks ago, but current site is this 3.5.X so wanted to keep things somewhat similar so reverted back after 3.6 made no difference.
~3more minutes please.

Ok, WP3.6 updated, and can confirm the WPDB page said database upgrade successful as well (didn't think it did much, but at least updated version table)
And now my backend has signficant warnings.
e.g.:
Strict Standards: Declaration of flexMenuWalker::start_el() should be compatible with Walker::start_el(&$output,...................<etc><etc><etc>

You see those?

Yeah, I'm seeing them...  They don't appear on my dev site, which is currently running the same version of WP and the framework that you have.  It's possible that the error is because you don't have a site/mobile menu assigned.

I'm going to test that theory now.

EDIT: It looks like assigning the menu wasn't the issue, but after a quick search, it looks like it's a server setting to report "strict standards" as an error, even if the error doesn't actually effect the operation of the site.

EDIT2: it looks like this might be a good solution: http://stackoverflow.com/a/11429898/962998 (The answer with 11 votes that suggests an edit of .htaccess)

Hmm, yes, the 5 google resutls I've read about this so far aren't very helpful, but have all resulted in some bug ticket getting created for WP/<plugin X>.
I'd agree this doesn't look the "the fatal" problem, so assume we should try loading up some of the plugins and seeing what happens.
Have a better idea?

I agree.  Just to hide the "strict" errors, because they're annoying, let's try that .htaccess edit in my previous post.

Then we can work through the plugins to see which one breaks the site.  Just because you have faster access, I'd suggest that you start enabling the plugins and I'll keep refreshing the page until we find the one that breaks it... then we can try to sort out the solution... and whether the "bad" plugin is even necessary.

EDIT: I'd also suggest updating everything possible, just to rule out the chance of the problem being caused by a bug in an outdated plugin.

Ok, I've done a mass update of plugins (via automatic)
supposedly all were successful, but page dumped a boatload of warnings/errors (e.g. Deprecated: Function ereg_replace() is deprecated in /<Mysite>wp-admin/includes/class-ftp-pure.php on line 113

Our .htaccess solution doesn't work as expected, but will dig into that next.

EDIT:
strange, I'm getting "All updates have been completed."
but the page is still showing them needing updates...
what are you seeing?

Are you sure you're not developing on a Windows machine?  The error I keep seeing about wp-cron failing fopen access appears to be a Windows-only bug (http://wordpress.org/support/topic/fopen-cron-error) that the WordPress team has classified as a "wontfix" in their Trac (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/11831).

I believe that .htaccess not working correctly could also be a Windows-related issue.

Good gosh no!
no windows boxes for me.
Freebsd all the way! :)

Unfortunately, I need Quickbooks and various other "Winblows-only" programs to run my company, or I would already be fully migrated to Linux.  I am curious about the differences between Linux and FreeBSD though...  is there a KDE variant?  What makes you prefer FreeBSD over Linux?  I don't have the dedication to install a "build from scratch" distro like Gentoo, but I do like Arch and other variants that have a "rolling release" model.

ok, i can confirm all plugins are up-to-date. Strangely though, through this process somewhere we've created a 2nd, duplicate autochimp record that doesn't update & doesn't go away, but we'll just not activate the old one and "ignore" for now.
In the meantime, i believe everything else is prepped & ready to go.

As for *bsd/*linux, personal wise, linux all the way. there's just better PC drives for linux distros than there ever will be for freebsd.
Server side is a whole different matter. FreeBSD is generally regarded as the better performing/more efficient OS. it's not windows to linux different, but it can be significant. Their Jails are awesome. There's the whole license model which prevents some software from being distributed on linux systems. But there is no real bleeding edge on FreeBSD. it's probably more corporate vs wild west. if you like the whole "it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach, that's FreeBSD.
But on a personal level, (esp because of quickbooks!!!) windows rules...

The second copy of AutoChimp is probably a duplicate plugin folder...  it should be ok to delete the outdated one.

At least for now, I think the "WP Debug" option can be set back to "false" in wp-config.php, just to stop showing those errors, since they're just going to be annoying through the testing process.

So which Linux distro do you prefer then?

Yes, well, don't see a 2nd it in the directory, but we'll worry about that in a moment.
In the meantime, I have just forwarded you FTP. (sorry, forgot to his send a bit ago)
I assume we can hit this more up tomorrow?
i think it's your end of the day right?

Thanks!

EDIT: the more i'm reading, those Strict standards come on when in this debug mode.
I've added this page to show you that PHP shows this as off (i.e. my htaccess is doing its job)
http://<<MYSITE>/phpinfo.php

EDIT 2:  ok, I'll start playing with this a little more. Thanks again for your time this afternoon. Sorry to monopolize it, but I do appreciate your support!

Yeah, I have some things I need to do around the house this evening, so we can work on this more tomorrow.

If you're still going to be working for a little longer, I'd suggest just going down the list of the plugins you "need", and activating them sequentially to see which one breaks things.  If/When one does, use the rename method to disable that individual plugin, and continue down the list, disabling any others that break the site as well.

Then, when we look at it again tomorrow, we'll have a better idea of where the problem is, and I'll actually have something I can do to help.

Have a good evening!


EDIT: Also, please disable WP Debug for now, just so we don't have to keep scrolling past those notices.

Hi again,
Hope you're doing well.
My today just got swamped fixing an unexpected production problem.
You're welcome to poke around on the site on your own, or we can wait until tomorrow.
I fully understand if you have other things to do.
I'll reconnect tomorrow.
Thanks again!
B

Tomorrow will probably be better for me as well, I have a lot of other work to do today.

Also: It appears that the FTP info you sent doesn't actually work.