Posted 4 months ago #
Hello,
All the pages in my WordPress site (including the Admin area) have a row containing hundreds of question marks at the very top –- appearing before the <doctype> in the HTML, like this: ???????????????>
This happened after I restored all my WordPress files (via FTP) and database (via phpMyAdmin) from a recent backup.
Does anyone have any idea as to where the fault may lie or how to fix it?
Thanks
Posted 4 months ago #
Hi pudswoods, generally when you have ?????? on a page, there is a problem with character sets / encoding. Do you use any special characters in your site anywhere?
Here's someone who reported a similar problem:
Character encoding (3 posts)
Can you respond back with your domain so we can take a look?
Posted 4 months ago #
Hi Brad – and thanks for your help.
I don't think I've used any special characters in the site, but I did wonder if it might be an encoding error from when I restored the backup via phpMyAdmin. It's happening on every single page, including the admin page:
Here's a link to the work-in-progress site. Thanks for any help you can provide!
Posted 4 months ago #
Hi pudswoods - a very strange problem indeed!
I'm actually working with a customer of ours right now that is having a problem with files being uploaded through FileZilla that appear to get corrupt. It have may something to do with FTP clients having the ability to upload in either binary mode or ascii mode. Personally though, I've never had a problem with uploading files using FileZilla right out of the box.
The interesting thing with your site is that the weird characters look different in Firefox than they do in Internet Explorer.
At this point, I would first take a look at your theme's files rather than the database. Before diving into your code however, I would first suggest switching WordPress to the default theme to see if the problem goes away. If it does, that we can determine the issue is due to something in your kellyco theme.
Posted 4 months ago #
It is loading in the quirks mode on IE which usually means something in the header is before the <DOCTYPE> and sure enough . . . it looks like the cat stepped on the keyboard for a while.
Check the header.php file if you have one.
Posted 4 months ago #
Thanks for the help, but the problem's still there…!
Some updates:
Any other ideas? Thanks again for any help offered.
Posted 4 months ago #
.home page page-id-16 page-template page-template-homepage-php
You can use the editor under dashboard apperance to check the first line of all the template files for ??????????????????????.
You could also try deleting the wp-admin and wp-includes folders. DO NOT touch the wp-content folder. Replace the deleted folders with fresh unzipped copies. Don't overwrite the files. Delete them and replace.
Posted 4 months ago #
Well, I fixed the problem!
In this instance, checking the template files and/or replacing the wp-admin and wp-include folders didn't work…
… but it appears that the original problem was caused by a failed plugin update. My first though was to disable ALL plugins, but this didn't fix the problem. Which is when I turned to the forums.
The problem was fixed when I re-updated all my plugins. This removed all the ???????> from every page – including the admin pages. I'm guessing that the problem was with the dodgy updated plugin squirting some malformed code somewhere, and was flushed-out by updating the plugin again.
Thanks to everyone who offered help – I'm sure it will come in useful the next time I break a website… ;-)
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