Title: Empty needle error: Please read
Last modified: May 9, 2019

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# Empty needle error: Please read

 *  Plugin Contributor [David Artiss](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dartiss/)
 * (@dartiss)
 * [7 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/empty-needle-error-please-read/)
 * A couple of weeks ago a number of users suddenly started seeing their sites slowing
   down with odd content being added to their front-end.
 * An “empty needle error” is being reported by this plugin.
 * The cause of the error is that the Footnotes settings have gone missing. However,
   why this is happening, and did so en-masse at the same time, remains a mystery.
   Deleting the plugin and re-installing restores the settings and gets it working
   again. However, a few days later you might find it reoccurring.
 * A while ago a user reported a bug in the settings saving code and so I am looking
   at implementing that, in the hope this has something to do with it. Right now
   I’m testing this on my own site and want to make sure the “needle error” doesn’t
   re-occur. As soon as I’m confident on this, I’ll publish the new version.
 * Apologies for any inconvenience this may be causing in the meantime.

The topic ‘Empty needle error: Please read’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/footnotes-made-easy/assets/icon-256x256.gif?rev=3563840)
 * [Footnotes Made Easy](https://wordpress.org/plugins/footnotes-made-easy/)
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 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [David Artiss](https://wordpress.org/support/users/dartiss/)
 * Last activity: [7 years, 1 month ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/empty-needle-error-please-read/#post-11484823)
 * Status: not resolved