Can not be installed

@livingstonewere thank you for reaching out.

Can you describe more about what version you currently have, and what version you are updating to? When you are noting a crash can you provide any additional information – such as what appears on the screen or in your error logs (if you are not showing error logs on the screen that you can share with us, we would recommend turning on WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG and reproduce the issue to share with his what is happening in your logs: https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/debugging-in-wordpress/)

Very commonly when users attempt to update and there is an error is a result of a third-party plugin or code snippet not properly checking to see if Charitable is activated (it’s not activated for a brief moment as you update). Not saying it’s the case here but it’s worth checking out. In order to test this you would need to (1) switch to a default WordPress theme for a moment and (2) deactivate any code snippet plugins – or all non-Charitable plugins. Try to manually update Charitable again via the upload option in WordPress. See if you get a different result.

Either way we do want to help you update, so please share with us additional information (or if you submitted a support ticket through our website let us know so we can locate that quickly) and we would happy to help you resolve this. Thanks!

@livingstonewere thanks for sharing that information – can you confirm the CURRENT version of Charitable you currently have? Thanks.

@livingstonewere Thanks for that information! A few months back when that version was released soon afterwards our team observed the same issue and released a fix in 1.7.0.6. You can see that in the notes for that version in the changelings here for 1.7.0.6:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/charitable/#developers

The best and fastest way to resolve this is to manually update your plugin which you can do by following these steps:

1. Download the zip file of the latest version of Charitable (1.7.0.11) here: https://wordpress.org/plugins/charitable/
2. At the top of the plugin page on your WordPress site, click “Add New”.
3. On the next page click “Upload Plugin” and “Choose File” and select the zip file you had just downloaded.
4. If your current version of Charitable is still active while you do this you’ll likely be shown the version differences between the currently installed version and the version you are uploading.
5. Install and/or activate and replace current with uploaded.
6. Make sure the plugin is activated when completed.

Instructions for this exist on the web for example: https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/step-by-step-guide-to-install-a-wordpress-plugin-for-beginners/ (scroll down to “Install a plugin using WordPress Admin Plugin Upload”).

If you are running third-party code snippets or plugins that might be adding functionality to Charitable that these must be properly checking for Charitable or else during ANY upgrade you might experience issues. If you think this is the case, you might want to disable the code or plugins first and refer to our code snippet code standards post here: wpcharitable.com/code-snippet-best-practices/ In any case, it’s always wise to make sure you have a recent backup.

Hope this helps! Let us know if you have any questions.

@livingstonewere The error you are reporting is one produced by WordPress and not Charitable… it’s somewhat not encountered often and is usually related to permissions or some sort of setting on your install.

Our team recommends turning on WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG and then examining debug.log to see if there are more details provided in that file after another attempt. You can learn more about WordPress debugging here.

Once logged is turned on see if you can repeat the same steps… then repeat the steps but this time deactivating Charitable first, repeating the steps after switching to a default WordPress theme, and then as a next step repeating the same steps with ANY WordPress plugin zip file.. If you encounter the same error after doing these steps would be to reach out to your hosting company to confirm if they have any special setup or items defined that might be effecting your WordPress site.

@livingstonewere The “license” message is a Charitable bug – one that has been confirmed to be resolved by users with version 1.7.0.6+. Since you have 1.7.0.4, we assume this is the same issue.

In terms of manually updating the plugin with the zip – these steps for a one-time manual update have worked as a solution for all users who did report the problem months ago. We haven’t encountered your new “download failed. a valid url was not provided” issue before – THIS error IS produced by WordPress itself and although the cause can vary it CAN be associated with unlegit URLs and/or hosting security settings (since you are uploading the zip file and not from Charitable, we are assuming the settings). Our support team would be curious to see if you got the “download failed, valid url not provided” error if you attempted to add or override ANOTHER WordPress plugin via zip.

You can also overwrite the Charitable version 1.7.0.4 (your current version) with the latest 1.7.0.11 via FTP. Here is a blog post explaining the process. If you reach out to us via our support site to securely share access credentials we would be happy to freely and quickly do this for you.

@livingstonewere in our experience that error message is a common false positive. But I can understand not wanting to delete any plugin – if you are unable to do the suggested steps via FTP (not via Cpanel) as provided – as I mentioned you are free to reach out to us. We would be more than happy to help.

@livingstonewere i’ve been told your request was receivedfrom us (if you didn’t get a response in the next hour please check spam). I will close this ticket here so there is no confusion or cross communication. thank you!

Hi @livingstonewere – we did respond to your request very shortly after we got it yesterday. We did respond and got no bounce backs from it so we assume you got it. We also JUST NOW send the same message again to the email you provided when you reached out to us. So please check spam if you don’t see either of these two responses from us (one about 24 hours ago and one a few minutes ago).

If you don’t see anything send us another message with an alt email address and we will immediately send the message to that as well.