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 Eleven 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.
Ok figured this out. What I didn’t do was:
1. Deactivate any plugins, regardless of whether they were in bold or not.
2. Switch to the Twenty Eleven theme, as that’s crazy talk.
3. Resetting the plugins folder, though I’ll note that for future.
I did reinstall (actually, upgrade WP) which didn’t solve it.
The issue was that for whatever reason, when WP was last updated, the multi-site feature on the site (ie, formerly WPMU) switched off Image, Video & Audio uploads, so I went into SEttings in the multi-site area of the dashboard and reinstated these.
Thanks for your suggestions, ESMI.
as that’s crazy talk
Really? So we post this advice just for laughs? A theme can impact on any part of the site – including the admin area. Right now I’m helping another poster whose theme has completely – and deliberately – disabled specific admin menus. Still think it’s crazy talk?
No, nothing is for laughs and I agree that a theme can certainly impact the way a site works. I’m no Theme Diva, though I do make my living from building WP themes from scratch myself, and do appreciate a response on here very much as I’m aware that it’s completely free and wonderful when one comes back, however…
I was simply stating that the old “reboot and see if your computer suddenly works again” type of mentality towards fixing things wasn’t my cup of tea. The problem apparently lies within a trigger in WP which, upon upgrade, changed settings that shouldn’t have been changed. This is not unknown with WP (such as the recent changes which hide things like The Excerpt, Custom Fields, etc. upon upgrade until a user goes in and manually rechecks them him/herself).
Thanks!
The reboot analogy isn’t really accurate. It’s WordPress Troubleshooting 101 – start reducing the unknown and variable factors in an attempt to narrow down the field of possible causes.
The problem apparently lies within a trigger in WP which, upon upgrade, changed settings that shouldn’t have been changed.
Nothing like that is coded into the upgrade process. So in your case, the upgrade process was either temporarily interrupted (possibly during the db upgrade phase) or a still active plugin or theme interfered with the upgrade.
I appreciate that the suggestions I originally gave were not the issue in your case but when someone posts a very brief outline of an issue, gives no indication of their experience level or what steps they may have already tried, we will still take them through the most obvious and basic steps first. In my experience, more than 50% of all general issues can be solved by one of those 3 steps.
