WordPress › Support » Comments won't appear; using 2.6.3; no widgets; mysterious! Help!

qpqpqp
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

I'm helping to run a WordPress blog on its own domain. Up until yesterday it was humming along fine. Many comments. I made absolutely NO changes to the blog. Suddenly, today, without any explanation, new comments no longer appeared on the site. One could type in the comment box (in any post), whether registered/logged in or not (anonymous comments are allowed), and press "Post Comment" -- and it would ACT like it was posting the comment, but nothing would appear. Zilch. No error message or anything.

The blog admin page said I should update to v. 2.6.3, from an earlier 2.5.x version I was using. So, thinking that was the problem, I updated everything to 2.6.3. (Successfully, though it was a bit of a struggle.) I went back to the blog, assuming this had fixed the problem and -- nope! Still exactly the same: comments can be typed and "posted," but nothing appears.

I then disabled (deleted, actually) ALL widgets, including Akismet. No change. I triple-checked the "Discussion" page in the "Manage your blog" part of the Wordpress Dashboard. Comments are fully allowed -- no moderation, no restrictions.

What is going on? I need to fix this ASAP -- I'm getting swamped by emails from people who can't leave comments, but I don't know how to fix it. There doesn't even seem to be any part of the Dashboard that addresses this issue!

Remember, this is a brand-new, fresh, fully functioning install of 2.6.3, and everything else works fine, and there are no widgets whatsoever.

Help!
qpqpqp
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Oh, I forgot to mention:

In each post itself, the "Allow comments" customization box is checked.

In the Dashboard, the global "Allow people to post comments on the article" box is definitely checked.

As an experiment, I unchecked them both, saved, then rechecked each box to allow comments, and saved again, thinking this might clear up some old cache or something.

But no change. Still no comments appear.

Hmmmmmmmmm!
qpqpqp
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Ooops, when I said "widgets" above, I meant "plugins": i.e. there are absolutely no plugins of any kind, so nothing can be conflicting with anything else.

I just quadruple-checked every single setting, in every part of the Dashboard, especially those in the "Discussion" panel, and not a single setting is set to block or prevent comments from being posted. Yet that it was is seemingly happening.

All these boxes are checked "Yes":

Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article (slows down posting.)
Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)
Allow people to post comments on the article

Is there some hidden "cache" or something like that that is causing the problem? I'm absolutely at my wit's end over this -- I can't figure out what more to do.

ANY help would be appreciated.
qpqpqp
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

I've just spent 12 hours trying to solve this on my own, to no avail.

Doesn't anybody have even the slightest suggestion? If you don't know the answer, where should I start in my search? What would YOU do in my situation? (I.e. no comments can appear on your blog.)
qpqpqp
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

OK, I just did the following experiment:

Installed the "Default" theme.
Change from my existing theme to Default; activated it.
Tried to make a comment on a post using the Default theme.

Result: no change! The comment still did not appear.

So whatever the problem is, it has nothing to do with the theme, since it happened the same under both themes.
qpqpqp
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Here is a weird new piece of information:

Sometimes (but not always) when I try to make a test comment on a post, to see if comments are still not working, even if the comment does not appear on the post, I get the following notification email from WordPress:

A new comment on the post # "" is waiting for your approval

Author : (IP: , )
E-mail :
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=
Comment:

Approve it: ...
Delete it:...
Spam it:..
Currently 0 comments are waiting for approval. Please visit the moderation panel:
...

When it says "Author : (IP: , )", that's exactly what it says -- an absent IP. Also, as you can see, it simultaneously tells me that I need to approve of a comment (even though I don't have "moderate comments" turned on) and than there are no comments awaiting moderation.

What's also odd is "A new comment on the post # " exactly like that -- no post # is given.

Is this a clue? Is there some miscommunication about the post numbers? I have my permalinks set to the default -- i.e. "...blog/?p=80" -- and they've always been that way.

I've GOT to get this fixed today!
qpqpqp
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Here is a weird new piece of information:

Sometimes (but not always) when I try to make a test comment on a post, to see if comments are still not working, even if the comment does not appear on the post, I get the following notification email from WordPress:

A new comment on the post # "" is waiting for your approval

Author : (IP: , )
E-mail :
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=
Comment:

Approve it: ...
Delete it:...
Spam it:..
Currently 0 comments are waiting for approval. Please visit the moderation panel:
...
When it says "Author : (IP: , )", that's exactly what it says -- an absent IP. Also, as you can see, it simultaneously tells me that I need to approve of a comment (even though I don't have "moderate comments" turned on) and than there are no comments awaiting moderation.

What's also odd is "A new comment on the post # " exactly like that -- no post # is given.

Is this a clue? Is there some miscommunication about the post numbers? I have my permalinks set to the default -- i.e. "...blog/?p=80" -- and they've always been that way.

I've GOT to get this fixed today!
jeanlucs
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

Same problem here... solution :

. Go into your phpmyadmin
. find your table *_comments
. You will see mySQL error 145
. go in SQL and type

repair table *_comments

that's it!

* = prefix .. normally wp_comments
qpqpqp
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

jeanlucs:

You are a genius!

I grovel in gratitude at your feet, weeping tears of joy.

I followed your instructions (with some difficulty, due to my newbie-ness), and...it worked!

The comments now appear!

I will eventually mark this question as "resolved," but let me give it a few hours to make sure the system keeps running consistently.

THANK YOU!!!!!!
jeanlucs
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

My pleasure :) I'm glad to see that's worked for you!
kelsnotchels
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

I have this same problem, and by looking at myphpadmin, I'm pretty sure the problem is with my table.

However, this fix didn't work for me. My error was that there "More than one INDEX key was created for column comment_approved"

Is there some way to Re-do my wp_comments table? Maybe to start from scratch?

Just like the OP I have a fresh and shiny install of 2.6.3, and know that the problem is not in my discussion settings. :D

Thank you, :D

(I'd be happy to move this elsewhere, but this problem is identical to mine, so I thought it might be beneficial to see it in this thread.)
muffyvan
Member
Posted 1 year ago #

I'm sorry but can someone show me where I can find "phpmyadmin"? I'm also having problems with my comments.
gymgangsta
Member
Posted 11 months ago #

this worked for me: Thanks to Pavlos:

1) You must have access to use SQL commands on your database, like for example with phpMyAdmin.
2) Select your WP database and click on the SQL tab.
3) Paste and run the following SQL command.

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = 'open', ping_status = 'open' WHERE comment_status = 'closed';
Isara
Member
Posted 7 months ago #

Brilliant! That worked for me. THANK YOU!!!
dr.arief
Member
Posted 4 months ago #

I tried both options from gymgangsta and jeanlucs, but still the comments are not working. I still had the problem exactly as described above :

A new comment on the post # "" is waiting for your approval

Author : (IP: , )
E-mail :
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=
Comment:

Approve it: http://drarief.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=mac&c=11448
Delete it: http://drarief.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=cdc&c=11448
Spam it: http://drarief.com/wp-admin/comment.php?action=cdc&dt=spam&c=11448
Currently 0 comments are waiting for approval. Please visit the moderation panel:
http://drarief.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=moderated

Can any one else please suggest me what to do ? I'm getting desperate to seek for help here...

My blog address is , I even tried to upgrade my blog to 2.8.1, upgrade every single plugins, enable and disable them, still no luck...