I borked my WP site, need PHP help maybe?
CB
Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄ƷDer Millionendorf- Icrontian
So, I was fucking around with some plugins and themes and stuff, trying to get my comics to look good on my blog (I failed, and decided that a separate WP install was the best way to make them readable) and along the way I messed something up, I guess because my site is borked.
At one point it was Totes Borked. The whole thing was completely inaccessible because in troubleshooting for one of the themes, I had found a thread instructing me to change the URL settings in my WP dashboard and that was a mistake. With a little help from some other googled threads, I got that fixed, and learned that editing my PHP databases manually is not so scary, but at some point something else got messed up.
Current state:
If you try to go to http://manawaker.com your browser (or rather all of my browsers and the browsers of others I've asked to check for me) will try to download my index.php. It only happens if you try to go to the base domain. Going anywhere else works fine, even http://manawaker.com/site-home/ which is where you are supposed to end up after going to http://manawaker.com is working just peachy, but anyone who just types the address can't currently get to my site. This is bothersome.
I found several WP threads which claim that this is caused by an errant redirect line in the .htaccess file, but I've checked that file, and it contains no errant lines. In fact it matches the ideal configuration listed in the WP wiki.
I've hunted to my limit, and can find no solutions to this issue that don't tell me that my .htaccess needs to be fixed, so now I'm at a loss. Can someone(s) help me troubleshoot this further?
Comments
When I go there, it asks me to download a randomly named file with MIME type application/x-trash. After some cursory Google work, I came across a page that says you should be on the lookout for any old renamed index files. Do you have anything in the root folder named index.html.old or something to that effect?
There is such a file; index.html.old it is 7kb, and says it was last modified in 2014. Looking inside, it appears to be what the name implies: an old (pre-WP) version of the front page of the website. What should I do with it? Does it need to be deleted? Do references to it need to be removed from somewhere?
Rename it to orig-index.html.old, or move it to another folder. From what I've read, just appending that orig- is enough to do the trick.
That looks like it worked! he said hoping nothing else got borked.
Edit: others are reporting in that it seems to be fully functional now. Thanks, Seth!
What a weird error though. That file's been sitting there for years, and just decided to cause a problem yesterday. I wonder what I did to set it off... (not that it matters. I'm just glad it works now.
)
Site loads for me now, CB
It did not just 5 min ago when I first read this thread.
A change you made may have re-written or appended the httaccess file. Instead of pointing to index.php as the "index" page, it may have pointed to index.html but maybe with a wildcard instead of index.html specifically.
Nice sleuthing, @Kwitko. I was sure this discussion was ending with me logging into FTP.
I hope you mean sFTP... If you're still using standard FTP, your nerd level drops by 100.
TIL learned there's a difference between SFTP and FTPS.
Please. We don't even have FTP installed on the Icrontic server. I'm just making assumptions about budget WordPress hosting.
Even budget WordPress hosting should offer a reasonably secure method of accessing the site. If it's so budget that they only offer standard, completely insecure FTP... find a different budget provider. o_O
I don't even know, you guys...
I use 1and1 hosting, and I log into my files with Filezilla. Everytime I login I get "Insecure server, it does not support FTP over TLS", but it still lets me do what I went there to do, so I've ignored it.
Then this might be a good time to start keeping regular backups
Yeah.... if you're using insecure FTP, you've got a decent chance of someone grabbing your username and password and trashing your site. Especially if you ever use public WiFi. Back up often.
And get onto a better host or make them enable SFTP or FTPS or something. Filezilla will support it.
A) Get a better host. "does not support FTP over TLS" speaks volumes about your current host.
B) The index.html file should have been a blank file that you don't touch. It's a file that has to do with very low-level site security for php sites. It's importaint even though it doesn't provide much security. note: Either your .htaccess or your host messed up the redirect that forces the index.php file over the index.html... or you got hacked...
C) Back up, Back up, Back up... never have a site that you're not doing regular offsite backups of. If you don't have anything Consider Akeeba Backup for WordPress https://www.akeebabackup.com/products/akeeba-backup-wordpress.html
....
(controversial opinion)
Z) Consider Joomla over wordpress
I have begun using a back-up plug-in. Previously, I was just making a copy of the /wp dir onto my PC every once in a while, but I've since been informed that that is not good enough, so I installed UpdraftPlus on all three of my sites.