Have you tried:
– deactivating all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s).
– 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.
esmi –
Thanks so much for dealing with this. I:
– Deactivated all plugins
– Switched to TwentyTen
– Downloaded (at the webhost) 3.1.3, replacing 3.1.2, which I assume satisfies your last suggestion.
The problem is still there. I’ll next try “resetting the plugins folder”, which will take a bit of time while I learn what that’s about.
In the meantime, it might make the problem clearer if you were to go to http://letsfixthiscountry.org (I restored theme after testing 20-10) and click any one of the links (different color text) in the middle column. Assuming you get 404, you will see in the browser’s address line that it didn’t clear the site’s URL and appending the link to it.
Thanks again for help. This is panic inducing.
Steve
Continuing:
1) in addition to upgrading to 3.1.3, I uploaded from the local machine to the webhost the wp-admin and wp-includes folders.
2) I followed the FTP procedure for setting the plugins folder aside, substituted an empty folder (the admin panel reported “You don’t seem to have any plugins, so I guess I got that right), then reinstated the original plugins folder.
The problem with link addresses still persists. Major trouble.
Where does one turn next?
The issue is specific to the middle column where the links are malformed – eg: http://letsfixthiscountry.org/www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-people-vs-goldman-sachs-20110511
The link becomes malformed when clicked. It’s not malformed to begin with. The following is a cut-n-paste from Firefox’s source window showing that the link is in good shape:
<em>Bloomberg/Business Week</em> in an
<a href=”http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_21/b4229060222515.htm“ target="_blank">article
Baffling.
esmi –
I found it. The sort of near invisible thing one might never spot. On its path from Microsoft Word through some editing software and into WordPress’ post box, the post somehow acquired around the link those inward and outward slanting double-quotes (therefore different ASCII) rather than straight up and down quotes.
Whew. Thought we were doomed.
Thanks for hanging in there with us. Not a bad item to add to the troubleshooting bible.
Steve
