Have you tried:
– checking through Troubleshooting WordPress 3.1 – Master List
– switching to the Twenty Ten theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.
– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin. Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.
– re-uploading the wp-admin and wp-includes folders from a fresh download of WordPress.
– increasing the memory available to PHP:
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/253495#post-1017842
Checked through the Master List (most of which you’ve reiterated here).
Switched to Twenty Ten. Still had the dashboard break when I activated Akismet.
Tried resetting the plugins folder. Created a clean one, installed only Akismet. Activated it – dashboard broken.
I will re-download WP and try that, again. I suppose one never knows.
If I recall from a previous go-round, increasing PHP memory is not something I can do with my hosting setup.
Try:
– switching to the Twenty Ten theme by renaming your current theme’s folder in wp-content/themes using FTP or whatever file management application your host provides. You may need to try logging into your site to get this to kick in fully.
– resetting the plugins folder by FTP or phpMyAdmin.
– re-uploading all files & folders – except the wp-content folder – from a fresh download of WordPress.
– re-running the upgrade manually using wp-admin/upgrade.php.
When you say ‘Break’ what error are you getting?
Can you enable PHP errors? If you can check the errors it’ll probably let you know what’s going on.
It does not generate an error…
Rather, it displays the basic frame of the Dashboard page, but none of the content “windows” are created or populated. Theoretically, I guess this doesn’t harm anything, other than making me have to spend more time digging around for the things that used to be all accumulated for me there…
Are you an Administrator? We actually had an issue today where someone told me they had an all blank dashboard and it’s because I forgot to make them an Administrator when they should have been.
Yes, I am an Administrator.
If I recall from a previous go-round, increasing PHP memory is not something I can do with my hosting setup.
What memory do you currently have?
@esmi – I don’t even know where I would find that out. *cringe* I’m not a web-savvy person, just trying to write a little blog…
It seems strange that after working fine for three years the memory would suddenly be a problem, doesn’t it?
Not really. There was a significant increase in the amount of memory needed by WordPress around about 2.8 or 2.9. Whilst the memory requirements have dropped slightly since then, you need at least 32M of memory – providing you don’t use too many plugins or have a heavy-consumption theme.
But, so, still… If I was working fine with 2.8 and 2.9, it seems unlikely that that would be the problem suddenly now?
Hope I don’t get blasted by someone here for butting in on the subject.
@ tiffany: I have this issue with one site out of 5 using 3.1 now. The original problem occurred using 3.0. But the upgrade did not help. Somewhere I remember on here that if all else failed it was likely a corrupted table setting in the msql database and if you knew how to go in there and change the corrupted code it would be fixed. Still looking for that fix.
I’m having issues with the plugins also. The DMSGuestBook in particular right now. It says:
Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 31981568) (tried to allocate 32 bytes) in /homepages/21/d359189625/htdocs/wp-admin/includes/misc.php on line 286
I’m acceding this error page through the plugins->DMSGuestBook->edit button, because the specific panel for the related plugin is just missing.
I thought that deactivating the WS-e-commerce plugin this would be solved but it’s not.
I’m setting 258MB in the memory_limit() method and even 1024MB but it wont help.
However, notice that i’m using WP 3.1.2 alpha right now.
Having the same problem. Enabling any plugin makes dashboard elements disappear and my clicking on the Posts link in the navigation brings up an empty page. Even if it is only Akismet. With all plugins disabled everything works fine.
I have already switched to the Twenty Ten theme, reset the plugins folder by FTP, did a new installation of WordPress. But no changes.
A complete new installation of WordPress in a subdirectory just worked fine without any problems.
