Wordpress can't save.

May 19, 2009 3:16 PM

Wordpress- When trying to save a post, I get redirected to my public blog page.

When I try to write a new Wordpress post, and I either click "Save" or "Save and Continue editing", instead of doing so my browser redirects to my public blog page, i.e. the blog root. If I then re-enter Wordpress Site Admin, my post is not there. It doesn't seem to matter what's in the post--it happens even with a single character.

- New behavior as of yesterday. Worked fine on Sunday.
- I am the only person who (legitimately) makes changes to Wordpress and no one else should have access. I haven't made any changes.
- Hosted shared server at Pair.com. I opened a service ticket, and they say it's not their problem and have not changed apache or Linux recently.
- Browser and OS independent
- Wordpress 2.2.1.

I'm not eager to try a Wordpress upgrade as the first solution.

I checked the Wordpress forums. There are several open threads on a similar problem on multiple versions of Wordpress. The threads that are resolved were fixed via hacking mod_security. Didn't work for me, but I don't rule out any other solutions along those lines...

Any ideas are welcome, either to fix the problem or to place responsibility on Wordpress, my hosting provider, or elsewhere.

Thanks!

posted by lockedroomguy to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

When you go back to the admin panel, do you have to log in again or is your session/cookie remembered?
posted by djgh at 3:35 PM on May 19, 2009

Response by poster: My session/cookie is remembered.
posted by lockedroomguy at 3:37 PM on May 19, 2009

Response by poster: Additional info: It also does it if I try to update a user in any way, ie, change a password or an email address. Happens when I click the "Update User" button. But it does not do it when I add a user. That works fine.
posted by lockedroomguy at 3:42 PM on May 19, 2009

I don't know Wordpress at all but something that can produce similar behavior in other web applications is if due to a misconfiguration when you click on a link or button you get transferred to a different domain or from an SSL to a non-SSL connection, i.e. the admin URLs begin with https:// but clicking on something accidentally sends you to an http:// URL.
posted by XMLicious at 4:32 PM on May 19, 2009

This was a bug in older versions of WordPress with some themes. Upgrading will fix it, but the latest version of WordPress looks nothing like 2.2.1. You can try a downgrade to the stable release 2.0.11 but it could be a pain, might be the easiest path tho.

http://wordpress.org/download/legacy/

You probably won't be able to fix it by simply switching themes, but you can give it a shot as well.

Overall, as someone who has worked with hundreds of WordPress installs, I'd vote for upgrading to the latest and staying upgraded. This type of stuff is why they have to keep releasing new versions.
posted by annathea at 5:43 PM on May 19, 2009

Response by poster: Annathea, I've been on this version for months without changing the theme. Does it still make sense that it's related to a theme bug?

The reason I'm resistant to upgrading is that I've seen this behaviour reported in the Wordpress versions for several later versions, including 2.7.1. There is an identical unresolved issue that was reported on the forums last week for that version, 2.7.1.

http://wordpress.org/support/topic/269219?replies=5
posted by lockedroomguy at 6:04 PM on May 19, 2009

I've seen this happen if you're using a different domain to log in to the admin as your site is "officially" using.

So, for example, if your blog's "official" admin is at http://www.myblog.com/wp-admin/ but you've been going to http://myblog.com/wp-admin/ it's possible that the cookies and sessions wouldn't be seen across the two.

Does this happen no matter what browser you're using?

Have you disabled all of your plugins and switched to a default theme?

Eliminating as many variables as possible can help narrow down the cause of it.
posted by toomuchpete at 6:39 PM on May 19, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks toomuchpete, I only ever use one address for my site admin.

Browser and OS independent.

I'm already using the default theme.

It happens with and without plugins. I use recaptcha and SimplePie, still happens with them deactivated.
posted by lockedroomguy at 7:43 PM on May 19, 2009

Best answer: I solved this by having my hosting provider restore all my Wordpress files from a backup from a few days ago, before the issue happened, and that solved the problem.

Since I hadn't made any changes to blog settings or options or plugins, etc, I didn't lose anything with the restore.

But of course I still don't know which Wordpress file or files caused the issue in the first place.

Thank you for the suggestions!
posted by lockedroomguy at 8:05 AM on May 21, 2009

Best answer: Eventually, this issue was reported by many other people on the Wordpress forums, and as of this writing my fix had also solved at least one other user's problem. For any future searchers of this problem, you might want to check out this Wordpress thread where I posted more details, and where more information might appear in future:

http://wordpress.org/support/profile/2930584

Regards,
posted by lockedroomguy at 9:48 AM on May 21, 2009