We are only aware, currently, of one circumstance that can stop a post saving even though it appears to save and this is if the user has tried to use an emoji in the post content but your mySQL database is not capable of storing them – and that just means it is an older version. 

If you could ask this user if they did this and also tell me what version of mySQL database your server is running (forum admin > toolbox > environment) then we can explain what is happening about this. If that is not the issue then we may need a little more data regarding the post content.

Hi Yellow Swordfish, 

I have checked the emails from both posts and yes, they both have smiley faces in them. 

I am using this mySQL version:  Version: 5.5.42

Is there anyway to disable these emojis so this problem doesn’t happen again or any other solution?

Thank you!!

should be no issue with that mysql version…  and you are running wp 4.2.2?   can you look at your db and tell us what the charset is for the sfposts table?

there are wp plugins (or use a hook) that allows for disabling of emojis… but not sure that would help here – Andy would be able to tell…

Thank you for your reply to this, sorry it has taken me a bit to come back to it.  

So I accessed my sfposts table in my db but I am not sure where to find the “charset”.  Can you help me with that?

I haven’t had any other posts disappear that I know of, but it would help me a lot if I knew it was solved. 

Thank you!

Hey Jenn,

You shouldn’t need to go into the sfposts table to look. If using phpMyAdmin for example – if you look at your list of tables and find sfposts (don’t click and enter it) it will be in it’s own column called ‘Collation’, just before size.

Thanks Ike.  

This is the value in that column for the sfposts table: utf8mb4_unicode_ci

Does that help?

That’s the one, although I’m not sure about how that would affect things. I’m guessing as it’s the correct charset that it probably rules something out, but I’m pretty new to databases so will have to wait for Andy or Steve to pick this one up!

I have to admit that I am totally 100% puzzled how posts could disappear. If something like that was happening i would expect more symptoms.

Can we discount any WP caching plugins because that can make ot appear that posts have vanished?

And if no – could you go to the topic in question – open the forum tools menu – click on view properties and when you have the list up – click on the verify button which will rebuild the indexing for the topic.

Thanks for your reply, Yellow Swordfish. 

I do not have any caching plugins installed that I know of.  I would be happy to provide a list of my plugins if that is helpful. 

I also tried your suggestion of verifying both the Forum ID and the Topic ID of that particular topic where the posts have disappeared and that did not solve the problem either. At least the missing posts did not reappear.  

You mentioned in your first post that this is something to do with the emojis.  Is this a known problem? And has there been a solution?

The encoding that Ike asked you about discounts the emoji support being the problem. And that problem would be very rare and the posts would never have shown up in the first place.

To be honest I am totally stymied here. When you look at the topic, do the post numbers increment properly? I.e., no gaps in the post number where these missing/phantom posts belong? And is it at all possible that someone did, indeed, simply delete or move them?

Thanks for the reply. 

I checked and there is not a gap in the posts of that topic.  

I have asked both gals whose posts have disappeared and neither deleted them.  

I am sending a PM to you and Ike and Mr Papa with login info and the list of problems we are seeing.  I will add in the details for these posts to that so maybe you can take a look then. 

we will try to take a look… just back from 10 days of vacation so I have lot of catching up to do before I can dig in, but have this topic marked…  and will check with Andy on his progress to date…

The only obvious thing I am finding are updates that have not been applied. This is especially true of the WordPress version you are using. This is 4.1.5 and the version of Simple:Press you have updated to requires at the very least version 4.2.0.

There are updates waiting to be applied for both WP and SP and I would recommend both are carried out – especially as the WP update to 4.2.2 contains some important security fixes.

There IS something odd about your login control. I do notice when logged in if I then load, for example, the home page, I am presented with a login form. This is not a forum issue of course but does look to be something that could do with attention.

Thanks Yellow Swordfish. Sorry about the updates.  I have done that now. 

I agree there is something with the login control. I understand that SP doesn’t control any of the logins, however they are required to function properly for the SP forum to work.  So I wonder if you might be able to point me in the right direction of how to solve this problem??

Any information that you all can give me would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you for your great support!