Words Like Locusts Flew From Her Fingers

Whew.

A couple days ago I installed the latest update to the blogging software I use, WordPress 2.6, and much to my great dismay my “admin” panel disappeared! (The “admin” panel is where you create new posts, edit old posts, and generally manage the site. Obviously, without access to the admin panel, you’re pretty well screwed.)

Well, I tried a bunch of different things suggested by people on the WordPress fora who’d had a similar problem and — no luck. Finally, this morning, I came up with a plan that — while really a pain in the ass — did work.

Here’s what I did:

1. Back up the database on the hosting server.

2. Copy your uploads, themes, plugins, and (just to simplify your life) your config.php file to your home computer.

3. Completely delete anything having to do with WordPress from your server.

4. Empty out the database on your server. WordPress won’t install if it sees that there’s already stuff in the database. 

5. Do a fresh new installation of WordPress. 

6. Restore the database that you backed up in step 1.

7. Go to the admin panel in your new WordPress installation. You should see all the old posts listed there, BUT your actual blog won’t see them. Don’t panic.

8. Create an export file of the blog from the admin panel. The export file will grab all those old posts.

9. Go back to your server and empty out the database a second time.

10. Go back to your blog and re-do the WordPress installation routine. (You won’t have to re-upload the files. When WordPress sees that the database is empty, it will prompt you to run the installation routine.) 

11. Once you’re back to zero with a fresh installation of WordPress, IMPORT that export file you created in step 8. 

12. All your old posts should now be appearing on your site.

13. One item at a time, copy your themes and plugins back onto your server. Check your site after each addition to make sure everything is still working. (I suggest this because it could have been something in your themes or a plugin that cause the problem to begin with.)

14. Assuming this worked for you — hurray!

It worked for me, but I didn’t come up with it until I’d already spent too many hours screwing around with other possible solutions and even checking out the possibility of moving to a new site host (because one person online had suggested that this particular problem might be the result of a PHP memory issue on the server.) 

Anyway. I’m pleased that you are reading this. It means I finally got my site back up and functioning with WordPress 2.6 — which really is quite nice, now that I can actually use it.