Father Jacob Maurer
We upgraded our parish website to the newly released WordPress 6.3 today. The transition went smoothly, but I've discovered a bug: if footnotes are inserted into a post, the post gets somehow corrupted and throws a 'critical error' message.
Anyone else experiencing this?
Father Jacob Maurer
The post content only ended up be recoverable by going into the mySQL tables, copying the post data into a text editor, and then re-entering it in a new post - *without* footnotes.
The original post had to be deleted, as trying to open it for editing prompted a critical error.
Father Jacob Maurer
I cloned the post and compared a footnote-free version with a newly created post with footnotes (otherwise same content).
The post with footnotes began tossing critical error messages. It seemed to start when I tried to toggle different preview versions (desktop/tablet/mobile).
Father Jacob Maurer
I know this might be related to a plugin in use. I am going to set up a staging site and individual install each one we use to see if I can isolate the problem. But if this is a known issue or something into which others can provide insight, it would save me a LOT of work!
Father Jacob Maurer
The critical error did not prompt an e-mail to the site admin with a recovery mode link. I don't know if that is itself a symptom or an indication that the problem wasn't severe enough to prompt that measure (perhaps because it only affected the post, not the whole site).
Father Jacob Maurer
@kraft @BackwardsFeet Thank you for the pointers and suggestions - I'm just experienced enough to do basic troubleshooting, but I wouldn't have known (or thought) to look at the Apache logs. I'll recreate the error and see what's indicated in the various logs.
Brandon Kraft ❤️🔥🧡
@BackwardsFeet @fathermaurer howdy Padre!
Happy to help. Is the error the "this block has encountered a critical error" type of error or the total white screen or death error page? I concur to check the server error log and the browser error console.
My guess is if it is the first error type, the server log will be clean but the browser console might reflect something.
Also happy to help setup a staging site and debug with you. Please let me know how I can help!
Fr. Paul
Father Jacob Maurer
@annyr Thank you for the suggestion - I wouldn't have thought of that myself, so I'm especially grateful for your pointing me in that direction.
Anny hopes
@fathermaurer
Check the apache logs before you start setting up a new staging site -- there's a good chance that will point you to the treacherous plugin (I also suspect it is a plugin)
Father Jacob Maurer
Well, I might be reading this wrong, but the log file I could find* doesn't seem to point to a particular plugin or the theme (I've tested a default theme - same error). Here's a screenshot of the error log entry (lightly edited to remove some identifying information)
*the PHP error log - I don't seem to have access to the Apache log, as we're using shared hosting
Father Jacob Maurer
Oh. Oh that might still be me. I recently upgraded the PHP version (to 8.2) while troubleshooting a *different* plugin issue. I didn't think to downgrade back.
Fr. Paul
@fathermaurer @kraft @annyr if I'm analyzing this correctly, this might actually have been because of a PHP upgrade on your hosts side, not because of an upgrade on WordPress's side.
Father Jacob Maurer
Gah. I see on the PHP compatibility page that WordPress is only tentatively supporting even 8.1!
Father Jacob Maurer
PHP 8 isn't something I'm attached to at all - I'll revert to 7.4 and see if that solves the issue.
Fr. Paul
@fathermaurer @kraft @annyr Yeah, a lot of breaking changes that happened with PHP8
Father Jacob Maurer
Oh hey, I didn't even realize you work on WordPress. Thank you for taking the time to weigh in on this!
Brandon Kraft ❤️🔥🧡
@BackwardsFeet @fathermaurer @annyr
try downgrading and see if that helps. If it does, since it looks like a core block (wp-includes/blocks/footnotes.php), I'll see where the Core ticket is on this one.
I thought we were to the point where 8.2 with Core shouldn't fatal or anything, but something is up with this one.
Father Jacob Maurer
@kraft @BackwardsFeet @annyr I've got confessions & Mass at my parish coming up, so I've got to step away from this - but I can already report that the formerly non-working post is newly accessible now that we're on PHP 7.4.
The footnotes block in that post displays an error ("This block has encountered an error and cannot be previewed."). Deleting and replacing it doesn't help.
I'll try cloning my original post (w/out footnotes) and re-adding footnotes to see if it tosses the error(s) anew.
Father Jacob Maurer
What would be the best way to send you the post content? And (revealing my amateur-ness here), what do you mean by post content (straight from the database entry, copied from the post into a text editor, something else?
Brandon Kraft ❤️🔥🧡
@fathermaurer @BackwardsFeet @annyr
my pleasure -- if downgrading resolves it, please send me a copy of the content in the page that was breaking. I can see if I can duplicate and confirm resolution and all that.
Brandon Kraft ❤️🔥🧡
@fathermaurer @BackwardsFeet @annyr
I got it.
We're checking if there are footnotes. If we think there are, we continue (great!). Then we decode them and count them. But, if the decode fails, there's nothing to count and... starting in newer versions of PHP... that's a fatal situation (vs just a warning, and it'd assume 0 count).
I'll open a ticket and push a patch this week to be more defensive, but would be good to know how un-decodeable content got there.
Father Jacob Maurer
Yikes. I'm pushing my lateness - gotta roll for now. I'll check back on this thread when I return after Mass!
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