How to fix my wordpress site?

mel123

Ok, so basically I thought myself how to build a WP site (its a corporate website for my job). Even if I do say so myself, it turned out pretty good. Little did I know all the problems associated with WP and updates etc
Now my site, is basically gone, no idea why, probably hacked/spammed or something. All ive got left is the menu bar which is all over the place, any images, side bars, content pages all gone, so ive had to close the site. Ive read and read ideas how to fix it, try this that and the other, but I cant get it.
Ive googled and ive found some sites (that you pay) that will fix it for you. Im wondering has anyone ever used these, or are they a good idea? Obviously I have to give them my passwords and that?

Anyone any tips or advice greatly appreciated.

Mother Brain

First of all, what specifically happened I.e changed that led to this.

If it's straight after an update it could be a broken plugin. Try deactivating each plugin one at a time to see if there's an issue there.

Second of all, why no backups you lunatic!

mel123

Im an amateur, I thought id build a site and hey presto :-)

I have no idea what happened, I made no changes etc, I was keeping the themes updated etc. One day I got a white screen (of death), updated plugins again and then all I was left with was a white background and the top bar menu I had all over the place.

Im thinking of spending the day redesigning the site now, it looks like my only option?

Mother Brain

mel123 wrote: »

Im an amateur, I thought id build a site and hey presto :-)

I have no idea what happened, I made no changes etc, I was keeping the themes updated etc. One day I got a white screen (of death), updated plugins again and then all I was left with was a white background and the top bar menu I had all over the place.

Im thinking of spending the day redesigning the site now, it looks like my only option?

Sure you're probably better learning what went wrong rather than redesign the site altogether.

If you do that and a few months down the line something similar happens you'll be none the wiser. Unless you want to rebuild from scratch once or twice a year!

Couple questions:

Do you have access to the backend? Like the admin panel and all that?

Do you have the ability to test things on a non live version of the site? Like, can you fire up the site on your own computer without it being accessible on the web?

I would still recommend the first port of call being to selectively de activate each plugin one after the other if at all possible.

You could also try and go back to the default theme and see if that makes a difference.

The thing about wordpress is that occasionally an update of one thing or another will not play nicely with old api calls in a plugin for example.

Plugins are developed by third parties and there is no guarantee that they are building them according to best practices so these kind of things tend to happen sometimes.

How many plugins have you installed actually?

TommyKnocker

Also if you updated to say to the latest version of the theme you are using, then this will have overwritten all your work in the original theme. But even with this you should have the basic wordpress 20xx theme in place.

I have a WP site up for over 2 years now with no problems. But I created a "Child Theme" to hold all my modifications to the original theme after the first update of themes brought my site down. From then on I have no problems with updates. I also use XAMPP to run my site locally on my laptop so I can check updates on my laptop first before applying them to the live site.

Mother Brain

TommyKnocker wrote: »

Also if you updated to say to the latest version of the theme you are using, then this will have overwritten all your work in the original theme. But even with this you should have the basic wordpress 20xx theme in place.

I have a WP site up for over 2 years now with no problems. But I created a "Child Theme" to hold all my modifications to the original theme after the first update of themes brought my site down. From then on I have no problems with updates. I also use XAMPP to run my site locally on my laptop so I can check updates on my laptop first before applying them to the live site.

This is what i'm getting at, child themes are definitively the way to go, but the op is clearly an amateur, and let's face it, wordpress is an unwieldy beast at the best of times!

Personally I host virtual servers on AWS for testing purposes to more accurately test on a pseudo-live environment. It's handy because you can debug certain network and performance issues a bit more accurately becasue they actually are "live" but they are only transient, and don't have url's mapped to them or anything.

You can pretty much spin up a server, do a bit of testing and wind it down afterwards while maintaining the state of the app during down time it's super handy.

mel123

Ok so thanks for the comments.

Update. I decided to delete everything just a short while ago. Ive spent hours this morning trying to sort the site.
Grand I thought, fresh site.
So there is no plugins at all, and im trying to test the main page by just putting anything on it, and all I get is a white screen.
If ive deleted all the old content, how can this be or why is it happening?

kc66

It would be near impossible to troubleshoot this without knowledge of the server setup, site setup, etc. Someone knowledgeable would need to take a look at it in my opinion.

Mother Brain

mel123 wrote: »

Ok so thanks for the comments.

Update. I decided to delete everything just a short while ago. Ive spent hours this morning trying to sort the site.
Grand I thought, fresh site.
So there is no plugins at all, and im trying to test the main page by just putting anything on it, and all I get is a white screen.
If ive deleted all the old content, how can this be or why is it happening?

Hang on did you delete the content as well as the plugins or just the plugins?

If you just got rid of the plugins then it seems to suggest the theme, or some other server / database / permissions problem.

Install the default theme. Your content (i.e the articles, posts and what have you) will remain in the database.

If you've deleted all of the plugins and install the default wordpress theme and still nothing then there are only a few major sources left to examine.

And an outside chance of hundreds of little things but hey... This is the joy of wordpress!

mel123

It was the theme, thanks everyone for taking the time to reply

Mother Brain

Glad to help. It's a bit of a jungle out there when it comes to wordpress and figuring out what the hell is going on with a site at first. So many users with infinite variety of server / plugin / theme etc. combinations. Working through it gets you learning though so you'll know in future ya know?

Have a look at child themes, it's well worth it for taking this kind of hassle out of the equation.

And don't forget to sort out a backup strategy!

EdenStudios

@mel123
For future reference, ask your hosting company about backups. Some provide it as a paid add-on and some do it automatically and then just charge to restore a backup. You might be lucky next time.