Two days ago I had a day that I have never seen in my 12 years of mastering websites for clients. Two of my client’s sites were down at the same time. Luckily, I’ve had a site crash before, so I didn’t panic. Both sites were working the following day. Here’s what happened. As you may know, WordPress came out with a new update, 3.6, as mentioned in the previous post. It quickly got replaced by 3.6.1. No problem. But, the themes and software plugins have to follow suit. My first client had a small request. Some images that were importing into a gallery were coming in too small. While I was waiting for the client to find their reset password, I looked around the site. Hmm, I thought, might as well update the theme. Usually, Elegant Themes does a superb job of maintaining their software. For whatever reason, the import brought down the site. Could it be the plug-in Back Up Buddy? Could be. Note to self: Turn off all plugins when you update the WP software or the Theme. Never thought that recommendation was so important! Thank goodness BlueHost came to the rescue. They were able to restore the site to the previous week. Be sure to buy their back-up service. It’s inexpensive and allows you to save a copy on your desktop or to the cloud. The Second problem involved a big shopping cart site. The client reached a point where new products could not be added. Could it be the WP E-commerce software, the theme software, or both? If you picked number three, you are correct. Initially we thought it reached a maximum number of products, but logically, 300 products does not seem unreasonable. Previously, when I updated the wordpress software and it broke, I restored the site. But this time, I realized, there was no turning back. I updated the WP E-Commerce cart software. The site broke like before, but I could add new products! Thinking that was a good sign, I updated the theme as well. Viola! We have a website that works. Granted, there are still a few little bugs to resolve, but my client is happy and so am I. Thinking of updating to WordPress 3.6.1? Call your webmaster and let her deal with it!
