Scoop’s Views

I’ve been running WP-DBManager 2.11 for a few months now, and for the most part, it sat in the background, doing, I suppose, what it was “supposed to do” on its own.

Yes, like anyone who has been down the proverbial road of having to do backups, reinstalls, and disaster recovery, I know enough to check up on things, especially “automated” processes, such as WP-DBmanager, to be sure everything is working as it should. Each time I checked, it looked as though all systems were a “GO!”, as NASA would say.

Aside from doing routine optimization on my database, daily backups, and a few other things I told it to do, WP-DBmanager sat on the server, quietly, doing nothing. Until today.

Last evening, which playing with a beta plugin that I’ve tested on a few test blogs I have, I ran into a problem. I have no idea what happened or why, but once I installed the plugin on this site, things went wacky. My homepage was redirected to another page. No, my homepage was suddenly being redirected to a page that should have existed, but for some reason, didn’t exist. Yes, it was supposed to be a WordPress page, not a post, and I created, as I’ve created others in the past. What happened? I still have no idea.

Since the plugin wasn’t working properly, I deactivated it. Well, I tried to deactivate it. Three times.

No matter what I did, the plugin simply would not deactivate. I had to jump into my FTP client, sort through the server’s backend, and physically remove the plugin from the server to deactivate it. That should have fixed things. Right? Wrong!

I played with the alpha version of this plugin, which I am purposely not naming since it has not yet been released and since the developer is diligently working on it as I write, literally. I was impressed by what I saw. In fact, the one feature that was added to the plugin had me excited, and using a manual implementation in a post even made me excited about the way it worked.

This version of the plugin, which is popular and used on many sites, is adding an additional feature that formerly was available in a handful of other plugins. While discussing a challenge I had with the plugin’s developer regarding a seemingly unrelated matter, we found the two issues were actually related, though separate.

To help resolve the problem, since the function of the second plugin was “similar” to the primary function of the plugin being developed, the developer and I chatted in email for several days about what I was looking for exactly. I explained what I needed, and why. This all ties into the development of Awake In America’s new site, as well as particular issues we are addressing, including ways to hopefully eliminate SPAM, both received by the organization, as well as sent by unscrupulous individuals using the site.

While working with the plugin, Scoop’s Views, while functioning, did not display its home page. Instead, it was redirected to another page on the site, which should have displayed properly, albeit, something that visitors would have found unexpected, but probably a non-issue in the big scheme of things.

After looking through the database, all the backend features that make WordPress work, as well as all files that make the theme on this site work for any possible coding error, I decided to “sleep on it.”

This morning I approached the plugin issue afresh. I checked everything again, wanting to figure out what was causing the problem. Nothing was out of place. There were no stray code fragments. The database powering this site didn’t have anything recent about the plugin, so I was confused.

I had already spent about two or three hours on the plugin issue, trying to resolve the issue of why a plugin that was removed from the server was still, seemingly, controlling in an ill-mannered way, my site. I surrendered, pulled up the admin page for WP-DBmanager, and looked at my options.

I have WP-DBmanager create one backup each day, then save it to a remote location, as well as send it to an unused email account that I maintain only for this backup. There were over 20 backups available at the click of my mouse in WP-DBmanager for me to choose from, but it is the most current backup that I wanted. Well, not the most current, but the most current backup created before the installation of the plugin.

WordPress has its own “export” feature, which allows WordPress administrators to create a backup of the complete database. Because I am anal about having a “stable” backup (some call it paranoid, but if you’ve ever lost key data, you understand the importance of backups), I also run another WordPress backup plugin in addition to WP-DBmanager, and that is WordPress Database Backup, by Scott Merrill.

Before I did anything, I did a WordPress export, a backup using the WordPress Database Backup by Scott Merrill, and created a backup of the database using WP-DBmanager. This way, if nothing else, three database backups existed, and out of those three, one should, if nothing else, work to recover the site to that point in time — plugin problem and all.

After making all the backups, I ran Fix Database 1.0, a WordPress plugin in Donnie La Curan. I also ran WP-DBmanager’s utilties, including “fix” and “optimize”, all without success.

At this point I had spent enough time combing through things to resolve the problem. It wasn’t fixed. Before I got frustrated, I went to Manage Database tab under the WP-DBmanager tab, selected a backup created 12 hours prior to the plugin being installed, and clicked the Restore button. Less than 20 seconds later a message flashed at the top of the WordPress admin page, saying the database had been successfully restored.

Phew! That was a load off my mind. I was worried, no, hesitant is more the word, about using the Restore option in WP-DBmanager, as it is one feature that I’ve not fully tested. It’s also one feature that people never want to have to use, but want to know if they need it, it’s there and that it will work.

In the end, my only “real losses” were three posts. One had already gone live, and the other two were scheduled to be published on the site within the next two weeks. Since I keep backups of all my posts, losing those three posts isn’t a big deal. I will open Windows Live Writer, open the copy of the posts saved on my computer (which are also saved to backups on external and remote drives), and repost the content. As I said, no big deal.

Yes, WP-DBmanager worked in restoring the database just fine. In fact, I was surprised by how quickly it flashed the database, dumping all the old content and replacing it with the backup version of the database. It’s time like these that a heartfelt thank you needs to be expressed to the plugin developers who make these fine tools that are lacking in the WordPress core code.