April 22, 20206 yr The company I work for used to have web designers, but they've left. A client is complaining that their site is not working properly. Had a look and the product page was blank apart from the masthead. I have very limited experience but after gathering login details I had a look in WordPress. Not knowing what to do I updated WordPress and that's made it worse as the page is now saying "There has been a critical error on your website. Learn more about debugging in WordPress" It seems a database should be linked to the page but something's gone awry. Is this possibly an easy fix that somebody could suggest I try, with a bit of research, or should we call in the professionals, which is what id prefer but the company won't do it. Ive tried repairing the database, to no avail. Could it be the php coding for the page's template needs amending? If anyone can offer some advice it would be greatly appreciated, I really want to help the client out but nobody in the company is bothered. Thanks
April 23, 20206 yr Welcome to the forums. I'm no WP expert but there are some forum members who should be able to help when they come online. In the meantime do you see any error messages? If so post them here, they may help.
April 23, 20206 yr If you have ftp access, download and edit wp-config.php Change wp-debug from false to true and upload the file. You will now see the error causing the site to fail.
April 23, 20206 yr Author I tried that, thanks, and wow a lot came up. This was displayed on the database page (i've amended the site name to johnsmith for privacy... Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function mysql_connect() in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-content/themes/eximius/connect-db.php:14 Stack trace: #0 /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-content/themes/eximius/tpl-pfmdisc.php(129): include() #1 /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-includes/template-loader.php(106): include('/home/johnsmith/...') #2 /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-blog-header.php(19): require_once('/home/johnsmith/...') #3 /home/johnsmith/public_html/index.php(17): require('/home/johnsmith/...') #4 {main} thrown in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-content/themes/eximius/connect-db.php on line 14 There has been a critical error on your website. And all this was also displayed on every page... Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; GADWidget has a deprecated constructor in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-content/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard/gad-widget.php on line 24Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; GADWidgetData has a deprecated constructor in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-content/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard/gad-widget-data.php on line 23Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; GALib has a deprecated constructor in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-content/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard/ga-lib.php on line 22Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; GAuthLib has a deprecated constructor in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-content/plugins/google-analytics-dashboard/gauth-lib.php on line 19Deprecated: Methods with the same name as their class will not be constructors in a future version of PHP; Shiba_Gallery has a deprecated constructor in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-content/plugins/shiba-gallery/shiba-gallery.php on line 53Notice: register_sidebar was called incorrectly. No id was set in the arguments array for the "sidebar_left" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-1". Manually set the id to "sidebar-1" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5167Notice: register_sidebar was called incorrectly. No id was set in the arguments array for the "sidebar_right" sidebar. Defaulting to "sidebar-2". Manually set the id to "sidebar-2" to silence this notice and keep existing sidebar content. Please see Debugging in WordPress for more information. (This message was added in version 4.2.0.) in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 5167Deprecated: The called constructor method for WP_Widget in GADWidget is deprecated since version 4.3.0! Use __construct() instead. in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-includes/functions.php on line 4806Deprecated: Non-static method SAR_Generator::query_manipulation() should not be called statically in /home/johnsmith/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php on line 287
April 23, 20206 yr Has the version of PHP running on your server changed recently? Also are the plugins running on the site up to date? It's possible your host has updated past PHP5 to PHP7+ which will cause this error. You can get the current PHP version by adding <?php phpinfo(); ?> on a template that actually loads.
April 23, 20206 yr I had a site break when the theme (Responsive) auto updated Could you try changing the theme (maybe one of the built in themes) to see if the problem goes away ~ you can always go back to the original theme after the test Forgot to ask ~ were there any emails advising you of any updates to the site e.g. plugins or themes? Edited April 23, 20206 yr by NeRo add Q about emails
April 23, 20206 yr The theme is the problem. It hasn't been updated since 2010! Go to the theme folder in your FTP application and delete eximus.
April 23, 20206 yr Author The whole web management has been a mess as nobody took ownership of it when people left the company so I'm not aware of any emails regarding updates. I've tried live preview with alternative themes and it's hard to say if it would solve the problems (without a lot of messing about) as you don't get a full picture of the translated site. It would have to be rebuilt I reckon. I am way out of my depth so think I'll advise the client what the problem is (outdated theme) and the site needs rebuilding. Will have to advise him to go elsewhere and I can transfer all the log-in details to a proper web designer. Bit of a shambles really! Thanks for all your great advice. I recently set up a basic website from scratch so now have a little knowledge of it all and will definitely come back here for advice when needed!
April 23, 20206 yr It's entirely possible a developer could copy the theme and patch it to work with PHP7 if the client is desperate. You ideally want to move to something that's better suited as soon as possible though but sometimes a solution needs to be put in place even if it's temporary.
April 23, 20206 yr If as @fisicx says the theme hasn't been updated since 2010 there maybe security vulnerabilities in it ~ another argument for the website to be updated
April 23, 20206 yr 18 minutes ago, NeRo said: If as @fisicx says the theme hasn't been updated since 2010 there maybe security vulnerabilities in it ~ another argument for the website to be updated Definitely, it needs to be moved to a new theme, but it can probably be patched out of the fatal error initially to give everyone time to move the site over.
April 23, 20206 yr Switch to the 2020 theme. You should still see all your content giving your something to start with. You may need to reset your menus and widgets but recovery won't take long. You can get a dead site up and running in under and hour.
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