Extensive Issues with existing plugin

  • mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)


    7 years, 6 months ago

    Hey everyone, I’m in need of some assistance.

    I picked up managing a website for a client of mine. It was originally created by a guy who abandoned her to the wolves after picking up a new job. He coded it heavily in PHP, bypassing much of the wordpress interface. He also heavily restricted the menus in the native wordpress interface to prevent her from messing things up. This severely limits my control, given my lack of PHP knowledge.

    That being said, the initial issue was with the page: http://lymphedemamanagement.com/members/#participants-list

    Anytime that list is generated, the last name doesn’t show up. We have no idea when this issue started happening. I rolled the website and DB back two months, only to still have the issue. I wasn’t sure if maybe the columns somehow got assigned wrong, or if it’s a permissions issue, or a layout issue.

    Looking into the column assignment though of mine, I went ahead and tried to get into the “manage database fields” options of the participants DB. This tab was completely disabled and I couldn’t access it. I ripped through the core PHP files, and found a section where it makes the “manage database fields” tab hidden. I was able to re-enable this. However, anytime I click on manage database fields, it’s just an empty grey container on the right where all of the options should show up.

    I noticed last night that if I go and try to add more members, those functions also do not show up and it’s just an open grey container. I’m at a bit of a loss here. I kind of want to flush the plugin and reinstall, but can’t afford to lose the DB.

    Any help/suggestions?
    I am heading out of Country for a week, but will be back and take a look at this around the 17th/18th of December.

    Thank you!

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)
  • Plugin Author Roland Barker

    (@xnau)

    7 years, 6 months ago

    Probably best to go with a fresh install of the plugin, thus removing any customizations the former dev did.

    Have a backup handy just in case.
    Disable the current Participants Database.
    Using FTP, delete the participants-database folder from the plugins directory.
    DO NOT use the built-in plugin delete function.
    Now, install the plugin normally from the WP plugins repo. All your previous databases and settings will be used by the new install.

    You can probably do something similar with any other plugins that were altered.

    Thread Starter mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    Hey Xnau,

    Thank you for your input. I’m back from the Bahamas and got to go through it today. Clearing the plugin and reloading it fixed the “blank control pages” issue that I was having. I can finally see the column settings and everything. I lost all of the custom formatting he did to make the columns and everything fit on the webpage, but that’s something I can figure out later.

    However, last names are still missing for ALL records. Except, I just added a new member, with a new last name, and it shows up properly. It’s almost as if the DB column which held all of the last names was changed? So say it called columns 1-9 for all of the info, it’s like another column which was empty was inserted between 1-2, so that last names read off of 2 now, which is effectively blank. Any suggestions for that?

    Thanks,
    Chris

    If you head to the page and search for members, you’ll see what I mean. You’ll only see one “last name” pop up, and that’s Graham, Test that I just added in the fresh plugin.

    Thread Starter mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    Exporting the .csv of the current database shows the same thing. All last names are blank, with the exception of my test one that was just added.

    Thread Starter mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    Ugh,

    I rolled it back to try and use the manual URL’s to get to the settings pages in order to copy the custom CSS which formats the results page. Unfortunately, it throws up access errors, “you are unable to access this page”. I’d prefer to not mess up the formatting she’s had on the site, it’s clean, when it works. Suggestions for this as well?

    Thank you for all of your assistance.

    Plugin Author Roland Barker

    (@xnau)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    OK, looking at the issue when you are using the latest version of the plugin, the missing last name suggest there my be an issue where the plugin expects a different db column name than what is actually in the database.

    To check this out, take a look at the database using phpMyAdmin and check that the column names in the wp_participants_database table match the field names for all of your defined fields…you can see this in the name column of the wp_participants_database_fields table.

    Thread Starter mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    Well, after several more hours of diving and breaking the database I have determined multiple things.

    1) The plugin was broken, reinstalling it fixed, but I have to try and manually code in the CSS for how the list displays.
    2) MyPHPAdmin was broken. Ended up having to reinstall it per hosts recommendation, but this was after dabbling in the only thing that did work, MYSQLMANAGER, and accidently dropping one of the display tables. oops. (they are going to restore the DB to resolve that).
    3) The last names are literally gone. Now that I can see everything in myphpadmin, I can view all the columns, and last name is literally empty. Checking all other columns, none of them contain the last name but are named wrong, or anything of the sort….. I have no clue how an entire column can just be deleted abruptly without anyone doing it.

    Thanks,
    Chris

    Thread Starter mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    Hey Xnau,

    One final question for you. With the admin interface being messed up in the old plugin, I can’t copy the custom CSS for the printing layout. I restored the site and pulled FTP backups of all of the old plugin stuff. Then reinstalled the new working version. Where in those files by hand, would I find the custom .CSS file that is required to format the “print members” function when you search? What would be the easiest way to implement this into the new version of the plugin to fix the way it prints?

    Right now it’s just left to right columns that run off the page. Before the .css had it set into nice little 2×5 boxes with clean formatting. Am I on the right track for the easiest way to re-implement that? Or should I go about it differently?

    Thank you again,
    Chris

    Plugin Author Roland Barker

    (@xnau)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    The plugin writes the “Custom CSS” to a static file in the plugin under the “css” directory, named PDb-custom.css

    If you find that file, the print styles will be there.

    If you cannot find that file, then the Custom CSS settings can be found in the plugin options entry in the database, but it is not easy to get to in that form.

    If none of that works, you will need to rebuild the print CSS from scratch.

    Thread Starter mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    Hey Xnau,

    Thank you for the insight. From the looks of it he didn’t use the PDb-custom.css file to delegate how the list looks when it is drawn.

    Instead, in the root Participants Database folder, there are 4 individual CSS files.

    participants-db.css
    PDb-admin.css
    pdb-list.css
    PDb-record.css

    My assumption is the PDb-admin.css is what ruined the management interface, so I excluded that. Copied over the participants-db.css, pdb-list.css (which I know is where it calls the formatting from by viewing source), and PDb-record.css.

    The plugin doesn’t naturally call those files to do the formatting though. He’s calling them from somewhere else. Is there a way in the plugin to point it at those files for the formatting? Or might I pull the pdb-list.css code and put it into the proper one to get it to work? What would you think is the easiest way to execute this task while keeping it as close to stock as possible?

    Thank you and happy new years!

    Thread Starter mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    At some point, if I start replacing files that I think are related, it fails to call the list. I pulled more, and it stops throwing the failed command to pull the list, but just displays a blankish page.

    He routed some special calls through javascript and PHP that I can’t identify to format this stuff. If I rip apart his .css files and try and put them into the custom form to “recreate” it myself, it doesn’t do anything when it goes to print it. It still just prints it in a row/column form. I’m kind of stuck at an impasse here.

    Plugin Author Roland Barker

    (@xnau)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    Well, this may not be helpful, but I’d advise you rip out all of the stuff this other developer did and leave the plugins unaltered from how they get downloaded or installed from the plugins repository and possibly even use a stock WordPress theme. Get everything working like that as a baseline, then add any specific customizations you need in your own way. That way, you’ll know how everything works and can deal with problems and make any future changes.

    Leaving plugins and themes unaltered is always a good practice with WordPress. Custom functionality should be a layer that you add on top of that.

    Thread Starter mxracer141

    (@mxracer141)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    The problem then is that I don’t know how to get the css implemented to make it look right, whenever I do a fresh install of the plugin. I’m assuming it’s called through the PHP, but I’m not sure how to format the columns and all of that by hand. Any tips for that, or references? It’s not quite as simple as html/css considering it’s pulling different columns and what not and placing them in different areas.

    Plugin Author Roland Barker

    (@xnau)

    7 years, 5 months ago

    The formatting of the plugin put put is determined by the theme CSS, the plugin’s CSS and the structure of the HTML, which is determined by the template you are using. You may get better results if you try a different shortcode template…I don’t know what you’re going for so I’m just guessing here, but I suggest you try the “responsive” or “flexbox” templates for the list shortcode.

    Changing the plugin itself is not recommended, it makes keeping up with updates difficult.

    For some general help and tools for working with the CSS, take a look at this article:

    Simple CSS Techniques for WordPress

Viewing 13 replies - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)

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