Major crash after updating WP Pro

Hey there. I had a rough day yesterday. I attempted to update the Pro theme (from 2.3.6 to 2.3.8) on one of my sites and…it crashed! First, I received an error message after the attempted update, “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” That lasted for several hours and I couldn’t get back in. I entered debugging mode and noticed a fatal error and 80% of my tables were missing.

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function get_element_names() on boolean in /home/contents…
I can send you a screenshot for the full message.

I spend hours trying to restore the backup from the previous day. For some odd reason the backup from the previous day still had the missing tables (although the site functioned properly minutes before I attempted the theme update). I ended up restoring a backup from a week prior (lost tons of work)…After I was able to restore the site, I ran a security test from the host (GoDaddy) and nothing turned up. No malware, injected SPAM or defacements detected.

Currently, the site is online. However, I’m hesitant to do an update if this is going to happen again. Please advise. Thank you

Hello @LarchmontBlvd,

Thanks for writing in! I would recommend that you create a staging site. This is very useful because you can test drive any X updates in the staging area, do the customizations and troubleshooting without disrupting your live site. Once everything is perfect, you can easily and flawlessly proceed the update in the live site.

To know how to create a staging area, please check out these articles:


Please let us know how it goes.

I shouldn’t have to do this every time you update the theme. That is very time consuming and not the answer I was looking for. My site is live, if I had to do this every time you released an update I would be wasting tons of time.

I disabled all plugins and cleared the caches. It happened again!! “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.”

Please help me fix this since the site is now down once again. I even tried to restore files and database back few days and I still get the error message and HTTP 500 error. I can’t even connect to FTP to see what is going on. This is very frustrating…

Hi There,

Sorry that you’re having that issue but HTTP 500 error does not necessary mean its a theme issue, it could be a server-side issue, caching issue, or a plugin conflict issue, or an issue with a customization you’ve done on the child theme. Please do the following.

  • Ensure that you are fully up to date. WordPress and Pro Theme.
  • Clear all the site caches (plugin, server-side, CDN, and browser’s cache) so that the code from the latest release is always in use. This will help you to avoid any potential errors. Please deactivate this caching features while we tackle this issue.
  • Test for a plugin conflict. You can do this by deactivating all third party plugins, and seeing if the problem remains. If it’s fixed, you’ll know a plugin caused the problem, and you can narrow down which one by reactivating them one at a time.
  • Try switching to parent theme before you do the update.
  • Contact your hosting provider to increase your allocated memory limit or do it yourself by adding this code in your wp-config.php file.
define( 'WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M' );
define( 'WP_MAX_MEMORY_LIMIT', '512M' );

You can add it before the line:

/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

Increasing PHP Memory Limit

If the issue persists, please provide us the site URL and credentials in a Secure Note so we can take a closer look.

Let us know how it goes,
Cheers!

See private note in previous thread

Hello @LarchmontBlvd,

I have noticed that you added a PHP code in the custom JS section.
Please remove this:

<?php

// =============================================================================
// VIEWS/GLOBAL/_TOPBAR.PHP
// -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Includes topbar output.
// =============================================================================

?>

<?php if ( x_get_option( 'x_topbar_display', 0 ) == 1 ) : ?>

  <div class="x-topbar">
    <div class="x-topbar-inner x-container-fluid max width">
      <?php if ( x_get_option( 'x_topbar_content' ) != '' ) : ?>
      <p class="p-info"><?php echo x_get_option( 'x_topbar_content' ); ?></p>
      <?php endif; ?>                                       
      <?php x_social_global(); ?>                              
      <div class="gtranslate" style="float:right;"><?php echo do_shortcode('[google-translator]'); ?></div>
    </div>
  </div>

<?php endif; ?>

I have logged in to the given ftp details. I was able to upload a fresh copy of the theme. I renamed the old theme as pro-old just in case, we need to revert to the old one. I refreshed your site and I am still seeing the same. It seems that the manual update I did not took place. Do you have any caching plugin? Please clear all your caching plugin and test the site again. For best results, please also provide us access to your WP dashboard so that we can investigate further.

Thank you in advance.

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