We’re back!
Well, that downtime was unpleasant, but I give all kudos to the people at whc.ca who helped me sort it out. Things may be a little faster now and I hope they’ll work better. Please let me know of any glitches you experience.
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Kate
Reply
Ian 07:42 on 2022-03-23 Permalink
Just got a critical error warning but it loaded fine on refresh – Chrome 97.0.4692.71, Mac OS Monterey 12.1
Kate 08:15 on 2022-03-23 Permalink
It’s worrying. This instance of the blog has more than 11,500 posts in it (and more than 38,000 comments!), which may be pushing the limits. Although that may not be the issue at all. Tuesday’s crash was due to running on an older version of PHP, among other things, and I just saw a fleeting critical error myself, which may mean more debugging.
Blork 10:11 on 2022-03-23 Permalink
I don’t like this new behaviour where making a comment first sends you into the post as a permalink (which is slow and then leaves you with only the current post and no other context). Posting the comment is slow too, and then it returns you to just that one post and comments (i.e., the permalink) not the full page.
MarcG 10:18 on 2022-03-23 Permalink
@Blork: There’s an error in the javascript and what you’re seeing is the fallback behavior. When everything gets sorted out it shouldn’t happen anymore.
Kate 15:00 on 2022-03-23 Permalink
MarcG, it sounds like you know more than I do about what’s under the hood here. Any other observations?
MarcG 16:13 on 2022-03-23 Permalink
@Kate: If you open up developer tools (F12) and look at the Console tab, you’ll see the error message (I is null) when you click on the reply button. It’s not easy to understand the problem since the code is minified. If I had to guess I would say that it’s because the p2 theme needs some tweaks to work the latest WordPress version. Send me an email if you want me to look into it.
Kate 18:42 on 2022-03-23 Permalink
MarcG, my hosting folks also say it’s the theme. P2 has not been updated since 2016! I don’t know the history of why Automattic abandoned their own themes but it looks like I have no choice but to adopt and customize a new theme from a different source.
Any advice on reliable theme providers? There are so many around, and no such thing as an objectively critical site.
Kevin 19:12 on 2022-03-23 Permalink
Ooh it looks very different on a phone…
dhomas 05:27 on 2022-03-24 Permalink
I don’t use the P2 theme on my WP page myself, but googling seems to mention a “relaunched” version in 2020:
https://wptavern.com/automattic-relaunches-p2-self-hosted-version-on-the-roadmap
I had some breakage on my page, though, when I updated PHP and MySQL. IIRC, the breaking change came when I upgraded from PHP 7.2 to 7.3 or it might have been 8.0.
I’m not WordPress pro by any means, but I manage my own site entirely (from managing the server itself to the hosting of the site) as well as one for work. If I can offer any help that your provider hasn’t already tried, send me an email and I’ll see what I can do.