Title: Fields went missing
Last modified: July 22, 2019

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# Fields went missing

 *  [turboraketti](https://wordpress.org/support/users/turboraketti/)
 * (@turboraketti)
 * [6 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fields-went-missing/)
 * I have configured a number of custom fields, but for some reason they are now
   not visible in Settings > WP-Members > Fields. Also, they don’t show in in the
   native WP New/Edit User dialog. However, they are displayed in the User List (
   the addon plugin), and the data once entered seems to be still there. I had a
   look in the database, and it seems like the wp_options > wpmembers_fields variable
   is set to the standard value for a new install.
 * I don’t quite know when this happened, if it was in connection to an upgrade 
   or the like, since I haven’t entered new users for a while, nor edited the existing
   ones.
 * How can I get the fields to show again, so I can edit the user data?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Plugin Author [Chad Butler](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cbutlerjr/)
 * (@cbutlerjr)
 * [6 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fields-went-missing/#post-11756195)
 * There are too many unknowns from this to answer what the possible causes would
   have been, but the plugin doesn’t write a new fields array if the existing fields
   array exists (i.e. it doesn’t remove/overwrite existing settings on upgrade).
 * To get fields back that you had, as long as the data still exists for the users(
   which sounds like that is the case), you just need to recreate your previous 
   field settings using the same meta keys as were previously used. (Ideally, you’d
   want to create those fields as the same field “type” as previous as well – especially
   in the case of dropdowns or checkboxes).
 * Hope that helps.
 *  Thread Starter [turboraketti](https://wordpress.org/support/users/turboraketti/)
 * (@turboraketti)
 * [6 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fields-went-missing/#post-11756789)
 * It did, thanks! It made me understand how it works.
 * What I actually did eventually was to recover the value of wpmembers_fields option
   from a database backup. A bit adventurous maybe, but it seems to work well, and
   I needn’t configure all the fields again, trying to remember the exact setup.
 * What initially caused this problem is still a riddle though, and I see no way
   to find out exactly what happened.
 *  Plugin Author [Chad Butler](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cbutlerjr/)
 * (@cbutlerjr)
 * [6 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fields-went-missing/#post-11760393)
 * Glad to hear you were able to recover.
 * > What initially caused this problem is still a riddle though, and I see no way
   > to find out exactly what happened.
 * Unfortunately, there’s not really a way to trace that.
 * One thought that I did have, however, is there is one possibility that I did 
   not think of in my original answer. It’s a remote one, but you could possibly
   be one of the people who fits into it’s limited scope.
 * If you port the site – say from a dev setup to production – there is a possibility
   that the value for the stylesheet setting will no longer be valid. In that instance,
   the value of the serialized array in the wp_options table will be corrupt (suggesting
   an incorrect number of characters in the setting). In a server that has extremely
   strict interpretive requirements for a serialized array, that could return “false”
   instead of the plugin’s main settings array. That would lead the plugin to believe
   that install had not been run and it would run a script that would insert the
   default settings.
 * As I said – it’s a limited scope issue – and regardless of whether it affects
   you (or anyone else reading this later), the root cause is addressed in the upcoming
   3.3.0 release as the stylesheet setting is being changed. But this is the only
   possibility I can think of where the plugin would overwrite existing settings
   of itself unintentionally and I’ve only ever had one single user where this occurred(
   which is how I found it in the first place).

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Fields went missing’ is closed to new replies.

 * ![](https://ps.w.org/wp-members/assets/icon-256x256.png?rev=1226414)
 * [WP-Members Membership Plugin](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-members/)
 * [Frequently Asked Questions](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-members/#faq)
 * [Support Threads](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-members/)
 * [Active Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-members/active/)
 * [Unresolved Topics](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-members/unresolved/)
 * [Reviews](https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/wp-members/reviews/)

 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Chad Butler](https://wordpress.org/support/users/cbutlerjr/)
 * Last activity: [6 years, 10 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/fields-went-missing/#post-11760393)
 * Status: not resolved