Comments on: Digging Out from a Blog Crash

By: Alan Levine aka CogDog

Alan Levine aka CogDog — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:13:10 +0000

Thanks Martha- I think nuking the entire active_plugins row and re-setting the plugins is easier and a more sensible approach! I also meant to thank you foir tweeting that functions-online site- it is very very handy! It saves me having to write test scripts to do things like process date / unix time conversions, as well as deciphering some of the spoam stuff using the base64_decode.

By: Martha

Martha — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:54:44 +0000

Funny, I’ve been dealing with some problems on a few WP sites lately that pointed me towards a lot of the same issues.

The first was when a plugin on UMW Blogs (which I was the only one using) borked our DTLT site. After some searching, Jim and I found some advice about active_plugins. (Link here: http://perishablepress.com/press/2008/02/18/quickly-disable-or-enable-all-wordpress-plugins-via-the-database/). In our case, we disabled everything by deleting the entire contents of active_plugins and then I re-enabled them one by one once I was back in (In our case, we weren’t sure which plugin was causing the problem.)

In another case I had some seriously screwing permissions after migrating a site from WPMU to a single WP install (don’t ask). After doing the same database hunting, I found the field that assigns capabilities to WP roles. I ran across the same serialized data that you mention, and that led me to this link: http://www.functions-online.com/unserialize.html. Basically, that decodes the serialized data — makes it easier if you need to do edits. As I discovered, one small typo can wreck even more havoc.

Anyway, I thought I’d drop those resources here in case anyone comes across your post and is looking for a few additional tips.

Thanks for blogging this! It’s always useful to see how people work through these kinds of issues.

By: John Martin

John Martin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:41:52 +0000

Dude that is just nuts! Like Scott I hope I never have to do this myself but I truly do appreciate your debriefing your encounter with us so that we can learn from your experience. And I have to say I love the way you wrapped your experience up in the car wreck story.

Keep on truckin’!

By: Scott Leslie

Scott Leslie — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:04:39 +0000

Well, I hope I never actually have to do this myself (fingers crossed) but as always thanks for blogging your process, it makes a lot of sense, and it is good to know where to manually disable plugins in the wp_options table, as that is a not-totally-unheard-of necessity.

By: D'Arcy Norman

D'Arcy Norman — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:57:13 +0000

Console! I hadn’t thought to load log files from a remote server in it. Duh. I use it all the time for local logs, but never thought to download apache logs from other servers and use it to mine them. Great tip! Thanks! (and glad you’re back on the road)