Support Forum

Unable to post replies or new topics after upgrade

SD Scott Donihoo
Scott Donihoo
Member

Good morning all,

      I have been a happy Simple:Press customer for years, and have had very few issues with it.  When I did, your forums were always responsive and quick to get them resolved.  Kudos!

Last night, I upgraded to WordPress 4.5.2.  After making sure everything worked, I updated all of my plugins including Simple:Press.  After the update successfully installed, the “Add Reply” button wasn’t working.  To resolve that, we figured out that we could comment out line 192 of sp-form-post.php:

192-       #$tout = apply_filters(‘sph_post_editor_footer_top’, $tout, $spThisTopic, $a);

This morning, I noticed that there were 16 Simple:Press plugin updates.  I went ahead and ran them, and here’s where I’m stuck.  When adding a reply or new topic, it goes through the motions, even showing the “Saving post – please wait” icon, and then errors out with this page:

sperror.png

I have tried to restore files from my backup in the /v5/wp-content/plugins/simple-press/forum/content/forms/ directory.

The files there are:
sp-form-post.php
sp-form-topic.php
sp-form-search.php
sp-form-post-edit.php
sp-form-login.php
sp-form-components.php

When that didn’t work, I tried restoring the entire simple-press directory under plugins to no avail.  I’m stuck.  Can you please help?

17 Answers

New Answer

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member

First things first. The filter you have commented out is used by just one of our plugins which is the file uploader. Without that line of code the uploader form will not be able to be used.

The original problem you had might possibly be a WP theme issue. In 4.5 WordPress updated to the latest jQuery and a LOT of themes got broken because their authors didn’t test or pick up the change. The most notable effect on the forum of this was the add reply button failing. That’s just a thought…

The problem you are seeing now looks like a simple php error. The Chrome browser in particular looks like that when an error occurs. If you can access the forum admin then take a look at the toolbox ? error log. Clear it out with the button at the bottom. Run the forum page and then check the log again to see what error has been reported. We are talking actual errors that are coloured pink.

If you can not get to the forum admin then you will need to look in the php error log of your website. Personally I would also replace the plugin with a download copy in case any of your replaces are incorrect. get the latest code in place.

SD Scott Donihoo
Scott Donihoo
Member

Hello @yellow-swordfish, thanks for the prompt response.  We were able to partially get past the issue and narrow it down to the uploader plugin.  When disabled, users have no issues posting new topics, replying, sending PMs, etc. When we activate it, the website errors out (as seen above) when trying to do any of those things.

We have gone over the code, deleted the plugin entirely (only to download and activate it again and run into the same issue), and there are no error codes in the Forum admin logs.

I will say that the last time i downloaded the plugin it was a VERY old version, but i still have it and when we upload, it gives us the option to upgrade to the latest.  I don’t know if that’s causing an issue?  Just a thought.  Any input would be more than appreciated.

Thanks!

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member

Sorry – are you saying that the file uploader plugin you are trying to use is an old version? I am sure you can’t mean that as you did say you had updated all the SP plugins in the first post but I am confused by what you mean.

So  have you ruled out your WP theme yet? the only way to really check that is to switch to a default Wp theme to see if things work and then back again straight away.

Failing that then I guess you need to check for script errors. If you know how to use the web console to check for these then can you try that? There is an FAQ in our FAQ – troubleshooting section that explains. It is very simple and quick.

SD Scott Donihoo
Scott Donihoo
Member

I apologize for not being clear.  I had purchased support over a year ago and have the uploader plugin installation that I downloaded back then.  We installed it and immediately updated to the latest version.  So we are working with the current one.

I will check on the FAQs and see if i have any luck in there. Thank you.

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member

OK 0- let me know what the console messages are if any. Just in the errors tab of the console please.

SD Scott Donihoo
Scott Donihoo
Member

Sorry for the delay.  Last night during scheduled maintenance, we were able to go back to the default WP theme and test the uploader plugin.  We still received the same error.  I then tried to disable every plugin except for the uploader plugin and still get the error.

I know something like this is hard to track down, but I see that another user had a similar issue: https://simple-press.com/support-forum/sp5-general-topics/500-error-after-upgrade-when-trying-to-post/page-2/#spEditFormAnchor

Were you able to login tot he forum and figure out their issue?  Please let me know if you can do the same for me.  Thank you.

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member

No – that user has not come back to us yet.

We were hoping to hear from you about web console entries?  (Errors) And a link to the forum page might be of use..,

SD Scott Donihoo
Scott Donihoo
Member

My apologies on the forum link.

http://www.faygoluvers.net/v5/forum/

I enabled the developers tools on Chrome.  I am able to upload a picture in the forums, but unfortunately as soon as I post, i get the 500 error.

Here’s what the console tells me:

v5/index.php?sp_ahah=post&sfnonce=819258805e:1 POST http://www.faygoluvers.net/v5/index.php?sp_ahah=post&sfnonce=819258805e 500 (Internal Server Error)
Navigated to http://www.faygoluvers.net/v5/index.php?sp_ahah=post&sfnonce=819258805e

Does that help at all?

MP Mr Papa
Mr Papa
Member

so definitely some odd things going on… your pages have several js errors on load… could be stopping other js from working… they are coming from facebook connect arbiter or something???

also, you are using the forum combined js cache… could you go to forum – toolbox – housekeeping and try clearing the combined js cache?

also, on forum – integration – page and permalink, could you try loading the forum js in the footer?

neither may matter, and what really needs to be addressed is clearing up all those js errors…

SD Scott Donihoo
Scott Donihoo
Member

Cleared js cache. Js set to load in footer.

After activating plugin and attempting to post, I get the same 500 error.

Tried clearing the js cache again just for good measure and same issue.

Disabled upload plugin again so the forum is usable.

What would be the problems, if any, of un-installing SimplePress and re-installing it and trying again?

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member

Unless there is an extremely rare and unlikely corruption then uninstalling and reinstalling is still going to end up with the same code footprint, Plus you will lose all of your data.

This is going to be an integration issue with either another piece of software or server settings. It virtually always is. So I am going to echo what @mr-papa said above. You have errors showing up on page loads. This includes 2 JavaScript files (neither related to SP). if these are then trying to be used somewhere along the line this can cause heartache. I agree that we really do need to sweep those errors away and get page loads clean as a first priority.

One of them is: http://www.faygoluvers.net/v5/wp-content/plugins/lightbox-plus/jquery.colorbox.1.3.32.js?ver=4.5.2

and the other is: http://www.faygoluvers.net/v5/wp-content/plugins/wp-bannerize/js/wpBannerizeFrontend.min.js?ver=3.1.6

Neither can be found by the server. I do not know what either comes from or does.

You are also getting this message at page loads: 

Can’t Load URL: The domain of this URL isn’t included in the app’s domains. To be able to load this URL, add all domains and subdomains of your app to the App Domains field in your app settings.

This too may have some relevance,

SD Scott Donihoo
Scott Donihoo
Member

This issue is now resolved. I posted a project to Freelancer.com in hopes that someone would be able to help, and found someone who figured it out.  We had to login to WHM and enable mbstring on our PHP installation.  After doing that, the problem was resolved.  The freelancer told me that the uploader plugin was throwing a PHP error:

  1. PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function mb_convert_encoding() in /home/faygo/public_html/v5/wp-content/sp-resources/forum-plugins/plupload/library/sp-plupload-components.php on line 980

That’s when he said that the plugin needed mbstring enabled.  I did so following this article:

https://www.vmotionhost.com/client-area/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=136

After restarting apache, the uploader function started working.  Hope this helps someone else!

YS Yellow Swordfish
Yellow Swordfish
Member

Wow, Good find, It is extremely rare these days to find a php install that doesn’t include mbstring as standard. WordPress always used to perform a check for it but has recently, I have noticed, started to drop those. Intrigued how your helping hand found the error.. I thought we had already looked in the php error log. But – great news.

SD Scott Donihoo
Scott Donihoo
Member

Yellow Swordfish said
Wow, Good find, It is extremely rare these days to find a php install that doesn’t include mbstring as standard. WordPress always used to perform a check for it but has recently, I have noticed, started to drop those. Intrigued how your helping hand found the error.. I thought we had already looked in the php error log. But – great news.  

He said that he logged in and looked at the PHP errors and found that one.  He immediately suggested turning on mbstring.  I’ve been with godaddy for nearly a year now, and this is the first time this has come up.  I waited a good month to upgrade to the latest  WP installation and this problem didn’t come up until afterwards.  Anyways, I’m just relieved that the problem is fixed.  Thank you for all of your thoughts.