Cannot edit pages

It sounds like you may have a problem in the display of your editor caused by the WPedit plugin. Have you tried disabling the WPedit plugin (Plugins -> Installed Plugins -> WPedit, deactivate) to see if it solves the problem?

Make sure you clear your browser’s cache, too. (In Firefox, it’s Ctrl+F5.) Your browser may be caching the old CSS instead of refreshing it.

Well, you’re already using a default theme, so unless you have added some custom CSS (Appearance -> Customize -> Additional CSS) that affects the editor, the only other thing I can think of is that you have another plugin that’s interfering. You might try disactivating all your plugins, and if that fixes it, reactivate one at a time until you find the culprit.

The other approach is to look at the CSS for the editor using the developer’s tools in Firefox or Chrome to see why you have white-on-white, but from your description of your developer skills, that may be a bit of a reach for you.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 3 months ago by linux4me2.

You can find out how to clear the cache in Chrome here.

There are only two things I know of that can cause that kind of problem with the editor: a CSS conflict or a javascript conflict. Both of those should be cleared up by using a default theme and clearing your browser cache.

I guess it’s possible you have a PHP error–which should be in an “error_log” file in the /public_html or /public_html/wp-admin folders on your server–but it seems unlikely since you’re not using any plugins now.

To use the developers’ tools in Firefox, you just use Shift+Ctrl+k to display the sidebar, which will by default display any errors in console first. You can then right-click on any element on a page and choose “inspect element” to display that item’s CSS. If you click on your editor, you may be able to see what the errant CSS is, and where it’s coming from.

That means there is a javascript issue for TinyMCE, the javascript-based editor that WordPress uses by default. It can definitely cause a disruption in the way your editor displays. Most likely, the cause isn’t TinyMCE itself, but a conflict between it and some other javascript running on your site.

I installed Twenty Sixteen on a test site and checked it, and I’m not getting any errors for TinyMCE, so it looks like it’s something specific to your installation.

If you’ve already deactivated all your plugins and cleared your browser cache, I can’t think of why you’d have a javascript conflict. Are you using the base Twenty Sixteen theme without any modifications?

I guess you might try switching to another default theme like Twenty Seventeen and see if the problem remains.

I thought of a couple other things that might be causing the error. Hotlinking protection can prevent javascript from loading if you don’t have it configured correctly. That would be unrelated to your WP upgrade, and usually happens when you have hotlinking protection enabled, switch to HTTPS, and forget to add the HTTPS to your hotlinking list of allowed sites.

Since you’re already using a default theme, and you have deactivated all plugins and cleared your browser cache, the other thing you could try is a manual update to 4.7.2 on the off-chance that some files were not successfully updated or were corrupted.

Hotlinking is the use of images from your site by another site. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. If you’re using cPanel for your web hosting account, you can see if hotlinking is enabled by clicking “Hotlink Protection” in the Security section. If you’re not using cPanel, you can use the file browser for your hosting account or FTP to look in your root web folder, usually /public_html, for a file called “.htaccess”. If you have hotlinking protection enabled, there will be something that looks like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yourdomain.com/.*$      [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://yourdomain.com$      [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yourdomain.com/.*$      [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.yourdomain.com$      [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://yourdomain.com/.*$      [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://yourdomain.com$      [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://www.yourdomain.com/.*$      [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https://www.yourdomain.com$      [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(js|jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ - [F,NC]

I think you may be able to have hotlinking protection through a plugin, but since you have those deactivated, that’s not an issue.

The instructions in the Codex will help you perform a manual update. It will make you appreciate automatic updates, but it does sometimes solve issues like you’re facing.