Man DOWN!!! Updated a Wordpress Plugin and ThisJWLife crashed.

dubstepped

Any wordpress gurus here that might be able to help? I was just updating the libsyn plugin, as libsyn hosts my podcasts, and suddenly there were "internal server errors" and I got the following message:

Fatal error: Can't use method return value in write context in /home4/umc/thisjwlife.com/wp-content/plugins/libsyn-podcasting/admin/lib/Libsyn/Api.php on line 154

Can anyone here help? I've never had this happen before.

I can't even reach my website anymore. I'm guessing that maybe I can go into my Hostgator account and find the plugin and delete it, but I kind of use it on the site. So I don't know if there's a way to get in and fix the offending line 154 or if it's a matter of starting over with the plugin, or if I can revert back to before the update.

dubstepped

Whew, deleted the plugin from my cpanel and my site is back. I just don't have the podcast player on my site anymore, but I'll try to find an older edition of the plugin and see if that works. Basically, I just started a thread to talk to myself, lol. I was too freaked out and impatient to wait for actual help.

jw07

Hey dustepped,

I'm still seeing your shortcodes showing up on the site with no player :-(

Sometimes I've had success by reverting to the previous version of a plugin like this:

Visiting the plugin page, in your case -> https://wordpress.org/plugins/libsyn-podcasting/advanced/

Then, going to 'previous versions' at the bottom of the page, and selecting the highest previous version for download.

Make a copy of your database, and if possible plugin folder before.

Let me know if it works.

stuckinarut2

NO!!!!

Dubstepped, I am sorry to hear that you are having issues with your site! We appreciate all you have done so far, and look forward to things being up and running again soon...

Maybe the Holy Spirit is messing with you!??

dubstepped

@jw07 - THANK YOU! I didn't know you could find the previous versions so easily. I went back two versions just for good measure. All I did was download the zip file for the plugin and upload it to my site and boom, all of the shortcodes are now back to being players for each episode again. If I had known last night it would be so easy I would have hopped on it then. I knew it was just shortcodes showing and put a note up about it and contacted Libsyn. I was going to wait on them, but honestly so far I've had a few issues with them. Everything is working now, I just won't update that plugin for a minute.

dubstepped

@stuckinarut2 - If the holy spirit was messing with me, then does that make jw07 Satan the Devil since he helped me get things working again? Lol.

The good news was that no matter what happened the podcast was still live on places like iTunes and Google Play or wherever you get podcasts, you just wouldn't be able to stream online from my site. So it was a minor matter, though when I went to my website and it said "fatal error" with a stream of code and I couldn't see anything I did kind of panic, lol. I've never had an issue like that from a simple plugin update before. I had a hunch that I could go in the back way through the cpanel and erase the plugin though, and that worked. Now I have an older version of the plugin instead of the newest update and it is working fine again.

This whole thing has definitely been a learning process.

stuckinarut2

By the way, I'm really enjoying your podcasts!

your brutal honesty is so refreshing!

thank you for taking us on a journey with you my friend!

dubstepped

You're certainly welcome! Hopefully I'll be updating that journey again this Sunday with a new episode.

Simon

Glad you got it sorted - I remember the Wordpress upgrade treadmill for software and plugins to always be a PITA and often going wrong. I think Wordpress is showing it's age and think the static site generators like Jekyll or Hugo offer a lot of benefits. I just wrote my own blog engine that runs on Google Cloud Platform too that's a bit of a mix - some of the approach of the static generators but with the ability to edit online and publish like Workdpress or Ghost (and the editor is more like Ghost than Wordpress).

dubstepped

Thanks Simon. I've had Wordpress sites for a long time without any issue, though none are really that big or involved. I do know that things are really evolving though and it may be antiquated at some point. I've never heard of Jekyll or Hugo but after a quick Google search they look interesting. It sounds like you've really gone deep into these things, or maybe I'm just easy to impress.

Libsyn released an update for their updated plugin for me to try. I guess I'll give it a go and see what happens. If it shuts it down again I know how to fix it with relative ease.

Man DOWN!!! Updated a Wordpress Plugin and ThisJWLife crashed.

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