My entire website is messed up. My theme panel settings have been reset to default, all of the post pages were going to an error screen (until my server helped me fix that).
Basically, I have NO IDEA why overnight the entire theme went wacky and went back to default settings. What’s funny is although they’re now default, the home screen still shows my custom settings. But when a post page is clicked on, everything is default.
Somebody please help. thanks. I’m running version 1.7.1. I’m not sure if that’s the newest one or not….but I never updated the theme myself manually.
Thanks,
…yup, even home screen now (it was caching just catching up) is now DEFAULT SETTINGS on everything in the Theme Panel.
Why did this happen? Is there anyway to recover my settings from yesterday in the Theme Panel?
Good idea to turn OFF automatic updates on WordPress.
Good idea to make regular backups so you can easily restore site if something odd happens.
Good idea to backup theme settings from the export option in theme panel.
If you’re using a caching service or plugin, you might try deactivating that in case the service you’re using crashed.
Not much help at this point, I know, but all of the above are good ideas.
Obviously nobody can help you put things back how they were, but disabling automatic updates, removing unused themes and plugins, check for issues with plugins before updating (like YOAST had major bugs with new 3.0 update), etc.
TagDiv will likely have some thoughts, but the theme cannot magically kill itself in the middle of the night — only a plugin, core update, cache/service change, host crash, or hack can do that.
Thanks.
I was under the impressions auto updates were off.
Do have regular backups.
Did NOT use the backup from the export in theme panel (screwed).
Actually I take that back…I have done backups from theme panel…just not in a while. Gonna have to re-do it all.
The more important thing is trying to find out why this has happened.
Your site error logs via your hosting panel might be good starting point.
Only reason wholesale settings would be lost if they were over-written by dbase changes, or if your host crashed dbases, didn’t tell you, and went back to their own backup (!). However, that isn’t very likely either. Obviously changing your passwords, etc., good idea, too.
Good point. It’s strange.
I went back to yesterday at 11 AM (server backup) ….as I didn’t lose my Theme Panel settings until maybe 2 or 3 AM today.
Didn’t do the complete database backup though. Just going to re-do the settings.
I’m thinking it has to be the Auto Theme update.
Is 1.7.1 the newest NewsMag update?
Chris, you seem like an expert. Maybe you can help me here.
I was just informed this….
Hi,
The .htaccess file for this site was modified 10 minutes ago. The default WordPress re-write rule required for WordPress permalinks to work was missing. I obtained this from their website:
https://codex.wordpress.org/htaccess
and added the rule to the .htaccess file. The links should now be working. You will need to talk to a developer to determine why this is happening. Troubleshooting this issue is outside the scope of out support.
***This is now the second time the .htaccess file has been changed, and I have no idea why, or what that even means to be honest.
What the server told me is it’s probably a plugin or the theme itself doing this.
Any recommendations? ..thoughts? Literally have NO IDEA what this is. I’m learning on the fly with this stuff.
Thanks,
Hi Robby and Thanks Chris!
I’ve also replied you via email on this and checked your site there and didn’t see the problem you initially reported and I wasn’t aware of your posts here so it my reply was a bit off of this topic.
At this point I’m not aware why this occurred however concerning theme altering the .htaccess file I can tell you that it doesn’t so this may happened due to a plugin you use. I see you lots of plugins and among them you have the Easy Updates Manager one which I believe it’s responsible for auto updates. We haven’t tested this plugin with the theme so I’m not aware if its functionality and it may be possible not to work well with the theme and generate issues. In this scope we have tested and provided the solution to use the Envato Toolkit plugin to manage theme’s auto updates, you can find a guide on this here: http://screencast.com/t/EZ0YVDIo – https://forum.tagdiv.com/how-to-update-the-theme-2/ ( this is made for the newspaper theme but the update process works in the same manner for newsmag theme also).
The latest theme available is version 2.3.1 – http://themeforest.net/item/newsmag-news-magazine-newspaper/9512331
If you decide to update it, considering all customization you now have we advise you to do a full backup of your current theme/WordPress/database: https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups and also consider the steps I’ve provide below:
– setup a maintenance mode and you can use a plugin for that.
– empty all caches/purge files if you also use CDN host then disable any services of this type until you switch to the new theme
– disable all plugins
– install the theme then install the required plugins
– switch back the rest of the plugins and start other services
Hope this helps
Thanks!
