Inherited Website with Older Version of Cornerstone

Support
#1

I’ve inherited a website utilizing v3.5.4 of the Cornerstone plugin. Cornerstone currently doesn’t load and doesn’t have a current license attached to it. We purchased a new license via the Themeco website but it will not validate. We’re trying to get Cornerstone validated and updated to make website updates. Here are some notes on the general environment and troubleshooting measures already taken:

  • Cornerstone Standalone v3.5.4
  • Updating PHP completely crashes website. Recovered by reverting to 7.4
  • Deactivated all plugins except Cornerstone, still doesn’t load
  • Cornerstone license not validating in plugin
  • Deactivating Cornerstone plugin completely crashes site
  • Deactivated custom child theme, activated default theme. Cornerstone does not load
  • Increased PHP memory limit to 512M via wp-config
  • No CDN service being used
  • No front end issues, all content is displayed as expected
  • Caching has been disabled
  • Theme = Custom Genesis Child Theme

Looking for assistance in getting this plugin current and functioning, thanks.

#2

Hello @studioarchitecture,

Thanks for writing to us.

In order to help you with your concerns, we need to check your settings. I would request please share the admin login details. It would be best if you could copy your live website to the staging server and share the admin credentials of the staging server so we can check it without breaking the live website. Please share your details in a secure note. Please provide the following details

  • WordPress Login URL
  • Admin-level username and password
  • FTP login details

You can find the Secure Note button at the bottom of your posts

secure-note
secure-note1040×250 15.3 KB

Thanks

#3

Thank you @prakash_s, I’ve provided the requested info in a secured note.

#4

Hey Jeff,

Thanks for providing the WP Access. I have checked the site, and it appears that you purchased the Pro theme license, yet the site has the Standalone Cornerstone plugin. You cannot use the Pro theme license to validate a standalone Cornerstone. What you need is a standalone Cornerstone License. You can purchase it in Code Canyon:

For now, what you can do is to manually update the Cornerstone plugin. Since it is already integrated in the Pro theme, you may copy the “cornerstone” folder from ‘/wp-content/themes/pro/’ and paste it into your plugins folder ‘/wp-content/plugins/’. This method is the manual update of the Cornerstone plugin. It will still ask you for a standalone license code.

Best Regards.

#5

Thank you, I will work on getting the standalone license and manually update the plugin.

Since we obtained the wrong license, could you help arrange a refund on the Pro license we don’t need?

I will report back once I’ve attempted to manually update and validate in staging.

#6

@ruenel, after manually updating the cornerstone plugin with the version included in the Pro folder, the staging site completely crashes with a critical error warning. I reinstalled the old plugins and was able to restore the staging site.

Please advise on next steps we can take?

#7

Hey Jeff,

In the staging area, temporarily deactivate the standalone Cornerstone plugin.

Update the PHP version to at least 8.x.

Manually update the standalone Cornerstone and activate it.

To make sure that the site won’t crash, you can put the site in “Under Site Maintenance” mode or at least put a sign that you’re doing maintenance. Deactivate the standalone Cornerstone while you update the PHP version.

Kindly let us know how it goes.

#8

Hi @ruenel, just giving you an update that we will be attempting these steps this week. Changing PHP will also take down our production website since our staging is on the same server, so we have held off until we had time during a low web traffic period. Will report back soon.

#9

Hello Jeff,

Thank you for the update, and it’s a good idea to make the change during a low-traffic period. Please let us know how it goes.

Thanks

#10

We tried the PHP update and manually plugin update in the order you gave us and the site still crashed. WordPress sent back an critical error email identifying a line of code in the themes functions.php file. The code it references in the theme seems to be trying to white label Cornerstone. I’ve copied the error message and php code from the theme below.

Also, when I went into recovery mode, the Cornerstone plugin showed an error message, see screenshot below:

Error Details

An error of type E_ERROR was caused in line 584 of the file /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-content/themes/sa/functions.php. Error message: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function cornerstone_theme_integration() in /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-content/themes/sa/functions.php:584
Stack trace:
#0 /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(324): rw_remove_cornerstone_notices(’’)
#1 /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(348): WP_Hook->apply_filters(NULL, Array)
#2 /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-includes/plugin.php(517): WP_Hook->do_action(Array)
#3 /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-settings.php(705): do_action(‘after_setup_the…’)
#4 /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-config.php(216): require_once(’/home2/thestuo2…’)
#5 /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-load.php(50): require_once(’/home2/thestuo2…’)
#6 /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-admin/admin.php(35): require_once(’/home2/thestuo2…’)
#7 /home2/thestuo2/public_html/staging-2025/wp-admin/plugins.php(10): require_once(’/home2/thestuo2…’)
#8 {main}
thrown

// Whitelabel Cornerstone
add_action('after_setup_theme','rw_remove_cornerstone_notices');
function rw_remove_cornerstone_notices() {
	cornerstone_theme_integration( array(
	  'remove_global_validation_notice' => true,
	  'remove_themeco_offers'           => true,
	  'remove_purchase_link'            => true,
	  'remove_support_box'              => true
	) );
}

image
image1380×350 49.5 KB

#11

Hi Jeff,

It shows that your existing theme is calling a method from Cornerstone, and as the plugin is deactivated, it is showing the error. You can add the following checks for the method.

    if ( function_exists( 'cornerstone_theme_integration' ) ) {
        //call the method here
    }

Or else you can activate a default theme and update the Plugin. Once the plugin is updated, activate the theme you want.

Hope it helps.
Thanks

#12

Yes, we had to deactivate the theme and plugin to recover the staging site after attempting to move to php 8.3.

Since I have a default theme already active, I will try manually updating cornerstone in staging.

This code you provided should go in the theme’s function.php grouped with the current block of cornerstone functions?

#13

With a default theme installed:

Tried manually updating the plugin and then activating: result is a fatal error message in the plugins section, staging unaffected

Tried manually updating the plugin while it was activated: resulted in a critical website error and crashed staging

#14

Hello Jeff,

I went ahead and updated Cornerstone on your site.

  • Check the secure note below

Here’s what I did:
1.) Deactivated Cornerstone 3.5.4 and deleted it in the plugins section.
2.) Switched to Twenty Twenty Five theme
3.) Uploaded the latest Cornerstone.zip and activated it.
4.) Switched back to your Studio Architecture theme

Please check your staging site now.

By the way, your SQL server is still outdated. Please check out the Tools > Site Health > Info and make sure to resolve the performance issues to avoid future errors and conflict on your site.

Cheers.

#15

Thank you @ruenel, the plugin seems to be working now! The theme might still be unstable for php 8 so we haven’t updated that yet.

#16

Hi Jeff,

Glad to know that it is working now. Please let us know if you need any further assistance with this.