Wordpress Woes

I did a dumb thing last week.

I'd been holding back on upgrading my Ubuntu server to 14.04...for good reason:  I was running software versions that weren't compatible with my version of Ubuntu.

Well, I upgraded anyways (after months of holding off).  It broke my web server and also reverted my Wordpress site back a few versions (3.8.x or something like that...I'd been running version 4.0).

That was this past Saturday.  Today is Tuesday afternoon and I'm almost finished restoring the site.

Things that broke:

Wordpress
PSAD
Apache

I'm going to specifically speak to Wordpress now.

This was actually an Apache/Wordpress combination issue.  I believe the version that Apache was upgraded to was 2.4.x.  It changed the default webserver location from /var/www to /var/www/html, which broke a LOT of my content.  The fix was easy:  I moved everything from /var/www to /var/www/html, ensuring the file and directory permissions didn't change.

Then, I found a multitude of issues with my Wordpress site's content:

1. All image links broke, meaning they wouldn't render, even after moving content to /var/www/html (but I could upload new pictures without issue -- and they'd render).
2. I couldn't perform upgrades to v4.0 via the GUI.
3. I couldn't install new plugins.
4. I couldn't install templates.

First thing I did was upgrade (manually, via CLI) to v4.0.  That cleared up some issues.

Next, I worked on trying to get the plugins to work.  I couldn't install new plugins.  I also couldn't update old plugins to new versions.  The error I would get was, "Unable to locate Wordpress content directory".  I'd also get "Unable to locate Wordpress plugin directory".  What I did was download (via web browser) the "third party host fix" plugin.  I loaded it to my Ubuntu server via SCP.  I then unzipped it, and moved the uncompressed directory to the plugins folder.  It still wouldn't work.  I found that a symlink was missing from /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content/plugins, so I created a new one:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 60 Sep 30 19:48 third-party-host-fix -> /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/third-party-host-fix

That's linked to /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/third-party-host-fix...that also the directory where the actual plugin content is located.

After I did that, I was able to see the plugin in the UI.  I activated it successfully.  I then tried to update a plugin...I got a different error:  "Wordpress could not create directory".  Ugh...

I found the solution on how to fix that issue at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WordPress.  I went to /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php and edited the following:

Changed:

define('WP_CONTENT_DIR', '/var/lib/wordpress/wp-content');

to read:

define('WP_CONTENT_DIR', '/var/www/wordpress/wp-content');

That fixed the issues of installing or updating templates and plugins.

The only issue I need to resolve now is the image rendering issue, but I think I'll just reload all the images, one at a time (there aren't all that many, I believe).

This was a horrible experience but the benefit was that it got me to delve and fix the issue (vs. just wiping everything and reinstalling the whole distribution).

UPDATE:

New issues --

1. Can't remove plugins.  Error message:  "Plugin could not be deleted due to an error: Unable to locate WordPress Plugin directory."
2. Using Photo Gallery plugin - galleries will render but the images will not show within the gallery UI.  I also can't seem to view the images via browser...may be another incorrect coding issue or even a permissions issue.

UPDATE 2:

1. I've fixed the issue with the Photo Gallery plugin.  I basically dumped the picture back in the directory where the plugin was looking for them (/usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/photo-gallery).  I hate how hodge-podge this is...crap is everywhere without standardization, but I'm to the point where I just want the site functional again.  I just hope things don't break when I next upgrade Wordpress.
2. I'll look into the "can't remove plugins" issue tomorrow.