alphonso06

Hello- give this a try and see if it proves helpful

Try manually resetting your plugins (no Dashboard access required). If that resolves the issue, reactivate each one individually until you find the cause.

If that does not resolve the issue, access your server via SFTP or FTP, or a file manager in your hosting account’s control panel, navigate to /wp-content/themes/ and rename the directory of your currently active theme. This will force the default theme to activate and hopefully rule-out a theme-specific issue (theme functions can interfere like plugins).

Hey, thanks for the reply!

I’m running plain wp with no plugins. And from my experience with Heroku, I’m fairly certain they don’t have FTP of any kind due to how they don’t expose any IP. Even domain names are settled differently.

As for themes, I’m running Twenty-twenty, the default one that came with the 5.4.1 install.

Here’s some additional information that I forgot to provide above:
composer.json

{
    "scripts": {
        "compile": [
            "chmod -R 777 wp-admin/",
            "chmod -R 777 wp-content/",
            "chmod -R 777 wp-includes/",
            "chmod -R 777 media/"
        ]
    }
}

The build logs of Heroku tell me the script above succeeds, so I’m thinking this isn’t a file directory permissions problem. But I could be wrong.

I will continue my investigation and post here whatever solution I can come across. Suggestions are always appreciated.

UPDATE
I manage to somewhat solve this issue by doing the following:

1. Download a fresh copy of WordPress, preferably the up-to-date version. Replacing the core files (wp-admin and wp-includes, and the other files at the root) while keeping wp-content doesn’t seem to help.

2. Place the clean version of WP at a different directory. This is to help isolate the case.

3. Use a clean database. Don’t import backups from the faulty site, this will have some adverse effects with versioning.

4. Do the quick install process and everything should be ready to go, widget areas are back. Make sure the plugins are also fresh installs from the official WordPress repository and not from the faulty site.

WARNING
I did lose all web pages by doing this method, but it did finally take care of the missing widget area problem. I suspect it might be related to the database but just to be sure, a clean install, as in 100% fresh and up-to-date is advised.

Hopefully no one else encounters this problem. Take care and have a nice day.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by alphonso06.