You should examine your server’s error logs and look for a recent fatal error. Are you sure there was only one update and that there were no other plugin or theme updates? Were there other plugins that you updated recently. They may have only manifested problems now and the Post Expirator is fine.
This is another good reason to have a process in place for either backing up your site and being able to restore it or having a staging/testing version of your site to first test any updates before applying them to a production site.
For instance, Duplicator is a great plugin for quickly copying a site. ServerPress.com Desktop server is another good tool.
This is likely not related to the the post expirator plugin.
Try removing the file “.maintenance” in the root wordpress folder – this usually solves this issue when an upgrade gets stuck
Thread Starter
scopie
(@scopieg)
Thank you graynotgrey for responding so quickly and your great ideas! I checked my error log and it is empty. I had updated several plugins before upgrading Post Expirator, but the site did not break until I updated Expirator. I do have a backup of my sql table, which I restored to no avail. I also have a full backup, but it is a few months old, though not that much has happened since then. HostGator has a backup I could get from them to restore too. I really thought I was prepared with the sql backup, but apparently not. I like the idea of having a staging site and I will try your suggestions. Thanks again so much!
Thank you, also, Aaron. I thought you might know something that could have caused it right off the bat but I could not find the .maintenance file. I searched the entire public_html folder and it is not there. What am I missing?
Thank you so much gentlemen for your assistance!
Thread Starter
scopie
(@scopieg)
One more thing, I see that I deleted one plug-in and only updated one other plug-in before I updated Post Expirator. Would it do any good to delete that plugin folder?
Thanks,
Susan
I think I would suggest reinstalling the core WordPress files. If it was a plugin issue, it shouldn’t be acting how the site currently is.
WordPress by default disables error logging – so you may need to turn that on if you are looking to debug it further.
Thread Starter
scopie
(@scopieg)
Thanks Aaron. I have a record of all the files that were added/deleted/changed yesterday and I see all of them were in the plugins directories except for wp-config. Hmmph.
Yikes – it appears something went horribly wrong – did you also upgrade the wordpress core?
Thread Starter
scopie
(@scopieg)
THANK YOU AARON SOOOO MUCH for your patience and attempt to help me out! I really couldn’t imagine that the website would have broken that dramatically over something else, but that is what happened. It was not Post Expirator at all, but another plug-in update that caused the issue. I have learned my lesson and will definitely be more careful about my posts! I am soooooo embarrassed and hope everyone reads this far to see that the problem was not yours! In summary, Post Expirator DID NOT break my website, and I sure do appreciate your understanding and help that helped me track down the issue.
Susan
