Errant character appears on every site page and in some dashboard widgets

  • Resolved optipop

    (@optipop)


    13 years, 2 months ago

    On every page of my site a single character “W” appears in the upper left of the window. In the browser source code it appears before the DocType.

    On the Dashboard it appears in several of the widgets, also in the upper left corner: Incoming Links, QuickPress, WordPress Blog, and Other WordPress News. It does not appear in Right Now, Recent Comments, or Recent Drafts.

    We’ve been through every file (I think) looking for this sucker. Could it be a conflict between a mod-rewrite and the .htaccess file? The site was exported from a single WP install and imported into a multisite. The W did not show up immediately.

    We have switched to other themes and it shows up on each one.
    Both I and the server administrator are stymied. Your help is greatly appreciated.

    –MarkE

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
  • @mercime

    (@mercime)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Since you’ve eliminated the theme as culprit. Deactivate all plugins (including mu-plugins if you have that), could be in one of those. Then activate one by one to find out the culprit.

    Thread Starter optipop

    (@optipop)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    M: I have already tried that. No luck.

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Link to your site?

    Thread Starter optipop

    (@optipop)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Hi Andrea,

    Sorry, the site is not open to the public (well that makes it harder…).

    We have created a new multisite, exported our data from the previous site and imported it into the new site (the new site does not have any of the previous plug-ins or templates of the old site). The W shows up in the new installation as well. That indicates (to me at least) that it is some data or function in the database causing it.

    Fortunately my clients are well versed in SQL and are writing a query to look for it. If you have any ideas, please let me know. Otherwise I will report back if we have results.

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Without being able to see the site, it kinda makes it hard so I’m left with guessing.

    Look in the theme’s source code.
    Disable all plugins.

    Thread Starter optipop

    (@optipop)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Yeah, we did that…

    @mercime

    (@mercime)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Have you checked in DB?
    1. Back up DB first
    2. Go to the “active_plugins” column of the “wp_options” table
    3. Copy the code in it and paste and save in safe place
    e.g. a:31:{i:0;s:19:"akismet/akismet.php"; etc. etc. etc. i:10;s:16:"wp-db-backup.php";}
    4. Delete the code in active_plugins column and save. This wil only deactivate plugins but keeps plugins installed.
    5. Check site frontend and backend and see if characters still persist.
    6. If cleared, then double-check code you copied and see if something breaks the pattern of the plugins activated) and delete that
    e.g. a:31:{etc.etc.etc. i:6;s:30:"...........strangecharacters ........."; etc. etc. etc.;}
    delete i:6;s:30:"...........strangecharacters .........";
    7. Paste corrected code in active_plugins column and save.

    Thread Starter optipop

    (@optipop)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Thanks mercime. Before I got your message, we found a work-around.

    We exported the database using the WordPress export function. Opened the XML file locally. The W was at the beginning of the file before the xml:

    W<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

    We deleted the W, saved the file, and imported the it into our new multisite installation. The new site looks clean. Obviously this is not an optimal solution. I do not have access to look at the database directly, but I suppose the errant W was sitting in a stray field all by itself at the top of all the records.

    @mercime

    (@mercime)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Obviously this is not an optimal solution.

    The bottom line is that it worked for you 😉

    The strange characters I mentioned in DB showed up at the bottom of XML file so the issue/solution was most probably different from yours.

    Andrea Rennick

    (@andrea_r)

    13 years, 2 months ago

    Yeah, and the time *I* had it, there was a stray character at the beginning of the file (before the opening php tag) in one of the mu-plugins.

    So – it’s different every time.

Viewing 10 replies - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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