You can try doing an auto-reinstall from the Dashboard > Updates admin page for starters, and see if that helps.
Before you do any further updating beyond that, make sure you have backups of your site files and your database as well. All of your posts, pages, and settings are stored in the database, so they shouldn’t be affected by replacing WP files and directories. Your images though are in the wp-content directory along with themes and plugins.
With that in mind, for a manual installation you can download a fresh version of WP and unpack it. On your server, delete and replace all WP files and folders with new copies except for:
do not touch wp-config.php (it has your database settings)
do not touch the wp-content directory (for reasons stated above)
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the speedy response! I tried doing the auto-reinstall last night and it didn’t seem to help. I get the feeling something may have happened to the wp-config file. Although, many of the other issues have been occurring since Oct or Nov 2014. So, I’m not positive. All I know for sure is that when I installed my custom theme and these plugins on a fresh site (subdomain) the issues I’m having suddenly didn’t exist.
To complicate matters, I’ve been having some issues with getting my site backed up. I have a full backup via updraftplus that’s over a month old and one from after the new issue occurred–so it’s not an ideal situation.
What do you think would be my next step?
Thanks!!!
Caitlin
I get the feeling something may have happened to the wp-config file.
There isn’t much in that file by default except your database connection info (unless you’ve added some stuff to it), so if your posts come up OK on the front end it’s probably OK. But you can easily compare it to the sample wp-config included in a fresh download and scan for anything unusual. (see: http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Default_wp-config-sample.php )
One thing to look at concerning those permissions quirks before doing a manual re-install: take a look at the permissions settings of your WP files and folders on your server. You can use an FTP client (like FileZilla), or your web-host’s cPanel or file manager to do this. (Or easiest: ask your web-host to check them for you.) Typically directories (folders) are set to 0755 and files are 0644. These are common settings for a shared-hosting environment, but check this page for your specific setup first.
I would go ahead and take a site backup now anyway, even though it may contain errors. Database too. Chances are most of your files are fine. If your permissions look good, I still think re-installing WP is not a bad idea, just to get a clean start there. Just be careful about the files I mentioned in my prior post and be methodical and you should be fine. Let us know what you learn.
