Cornerstone upgrade from 4.2.3 -> 5.2.3 yields blank content

[Fahs]

Cornerstone 4.2.3 works without error with X Theme 8.2.3 and the rest of our configuration. However, if we upgrade Cornerstone 4.2.3 to 5.2.3, the body areas of all Cornerstone pages are blank. (Pages created in the block editor work fine.)

If we revert to Cornerstone 4.2.3 things work as expected. We have our production site still using 4.2.3, but would like to be able to upgrade to the most recent version of Cornerstone. We have a staging site set up with 5.2.3 installed so we can show you the issue.

We’ve tried:

• Disabling all plugins except for Cornerstone
• Checking for theme and child-theme related issues
• Removing custom CSS and JS
• Disabling all caching
• Increasing the PHP memory limit to 512M
• Deleting the Cornerstone plugin entirely and re-installing 5.2.3

Thanks for any help.

[prakash_s]

Hello @Fahs,

Thanks for writing to us.

It seems that the page data has been corrupted, I would suggest you restore the database to the previous date. You may contact the hosting provider for the backup. After restoring the database You need to update the theme and plugin. I would suggest you contact your hosting provider to purge all the server level cache. I would also suggest you follow the below steps after clearing the cache.

1. Delete the Cornerstone
2. Reinstall the X theme to the latest version
3. After the X theme is installed now install the Cornerstone plugin.

If it doesn’t work for you please let us know.

Hope it helps
Thanks

[Fahs]

Thanks for your response. It looks like there may be a deeper problem here that had been present (but not immediately noticeable) before the upgrade.

I’ve restored a pre-upgrade copy of the site with the server-level cache disabled. While the site displays all content correctly and operates correctly in all other respects, when selecting “Edit with Cornerstone” on a page, Cornerstone itself does not load the content. I’ve checked as far back as our backups go, and unfortunately, this issue is present on backups from some time ago, and now does not look likely to be related to the upgrades. Perhaps it has just been a long time since a Cornerstone page has been edited and so this has gone unnoticed.

I’ll attach a secure note with access information to a pre-upgrade backup that displays only the issue when editing a Cornerstone page. Hopefully, since the content can be displayed on the site, this corruption can be resolved to allow for an upgrade. Please take a look once I post the secure note and let me know.

[tristup]

Hi Joe,

I have updated the X theme to its latest version i.e 8.3.1 in your staging and found that the page with the Cornerstone data is loading properly, and the page which has the data added through the WordPress default editor is not showing in the Cornerstone.

Please remember that content added through the default editor or Gutenberg is not viewable in the builder, and vice-versa.

Hope it helps.
Thanks

[Fahs]

Tristup, your upgrade has caused the site to break and not display content, the same issues that are what I reported in my initial message. If you visit the site, you will see that the home page and all other Cornerstone pages are now only displaying the header and footer. This was not a situation where there was not Cornerstone data present when I shared the site with you - the Cornerstone data appears to have been wiped out in your upgrade.

Please let me know what configuration I should set up the staging site in to best troubleshoot this continuing issue, or if you can fix the site in its present broken post-upgrade state.

[Fahs]

Let’s try this again. I’ve gone ahead and restored the site to the pre-upgrade state.

The primary issue here appears to be that many pages previously edited in Cornerstone, while displaying without issue on the site, have lost some sort of Cornerstone metadata, which prevents them from being further edited, and is causing them to be wiped out when the Cornerstone 5.2.3 upgrade happens.

Let’s use Home as the example page. It’s the home page of the site. It was last edited in June of 2019, and it almost certainly has never been edited in the Wordpress editor, only Cornerstone. Cornerstone has been upgraded several times since 6/2019 without any breakage until just recently. The page displays correctly on the site, so it would seem like all necessary data is present. It is only when it is loaded into Cornerstone (where it can’t be edited), or Cornerstone is upgraded (which wipes out the content), that there is a problem.

Caches are disabled on the site. The issue occurs even with all other plugins disabled, and all of the other troubleshooting steps have been followed.

Please take a look and let me know what needs to be done. I will attach a secure note with additional access information.

[tristup]

Hi Joe,

By checking the page content I found that it has been created using much older version of theme, and the used shortcodes are no longer supported by the current versions. Regretfully, the only solution is to re-create the pages in the newer version of builder.

Thanks for understanding