WordPress & PHP in Production

Start here Jun 25, 2026 3 min read

Adding a require_once to a Live functions.php Locked Me Out of wp-admin, and the Recovery Tool With It

Oct 14, 2026 6 min read

WordPress Form Stuck on a Blank admin-post.php? An open_basedir restriction in effect Warning Beat the Headers

Oct 14, 2026 8 min read

ssh -n With a Heredoc Exits 0 and Prints Nothing: The Remote Bash Reads /dev/null, Not Your Script

Oct 8, 2026 8 min read

Pagination Page 2 Renders Page 1? get_query_var('paged', $default) Never Uses Its Default

Sep 25, 2026 9 min read

Search Never Finds Any Name From the Letter K Onward? posts_per_page 300 on a List Sorted by Title

Sep 23, 2026 7 min read

wp db export --single-transaction Leaves an 840-Byte Dump: FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK Denied Without a RELOAD Grant

Sep 22, 2026 8 min read

Event List Gone, Only the Search Box Left: Events Search & Filter Bar v2 Split the Shortcode in Two

Sep 21, 2026 7 min read

Upload Folder Returns 500, Not 403: php_flag engine off in .htaccess Is Illegal Under FastCGI

Sep 20, 2026 9 min read

meta_query NOT EXISTS Cut the Feed From 356 Posts to 147: An Unticked Checkbox Still Saves an Empty Value

Sep 19, 2026 6 min read

A Form Guard That Only Knew bot or not: A Real Person Told to Wait for an Email That Was Never Sent

Sep 18, 2026 8 min read

Searching an Author Name Returns 1 Result While Four New Posts Stay Invisible? The Theme Had No search.php

Sep 14, 2026 6 min read

33 Rank Math Meta Descriptions Had to Come from a Client CSV: Set Them Through the Internal rankmath/v1/updateMeta REST Endpoint, Not the Per-Page Editor

Sep 7, 2026 4 min read

add_meta_box() Box Never Shows Up in wp-admin? The String 'side' Landed in the $screen Argument

Sep 2, 2026 4 min read

php -l Says Unmatched '}' on Line 466 but the Braces Balance: A ?> Inside a // Comment

Aug 29, 2026 6 min read

Import Succeeded, Counts Matched, Every Image Broken: The Parser Stored MEDIA.cover as Text

Aug 26, 2026 9 min read

The Category Filter That Never Filtered: I Mapped ?category= to s=, and s= Is an AND-Search

Aug 26, 2026 8 min read

Headers Say spf=pass but Mail Still Lands in Spam? DMARC Is the One Failing, Because SPF Aligns With the Server's Domain

Aug 23, 2026 7 min read

Phantom <video> Element Shows Up in 2 of 10 Requests Even Though the File Was Deleted Hours Ago? That's PHP's Stat Cache, Not OPcache

Aug 20, 2026 7 min read

Every Number Says the Database Rolled Back Two Months? The Apache Vhost Points at a Retired Install That Carries Its Own Database

Aug 20, 2026 7 min read

Whole Site 500s While php -l Is Clean and md5 Matches? umask 077 in the Deploy Shell Shipped Mode 600 Files

Aug 19, 2026 7 min read

Every URL Returns HTTP 200 With a Zero-Byte Body and Not One PHP Error? index.php Sets $wp_did_header Before wp-blog-header.php Gets to Run

Aug 18, 2026 9 min read

FR/EN Bilingual Without WPML: Three Client-Side i18n Mechanisms in One WordPress Theme

Aug 16, 2026 6 min read

New Listings Never Reach the Moderation Queue or Search? _listing_status Is Never Written on Create

Aug 12, 2026 6 min read

Pinned Section Renders as an Empty Box? <picture> Is display:inline and object-fit on <source> Never Runs

Aug 11, 2026 4 min read

A Paid Booking Stuck at approved? mark_booking_paid() Only Knew One Starting Status

Aug 9, 2026 5 min read

Cannot redeclare theme_geo_label(): php -l Said Clean, Uploading inc/ Took the Whole Site Down

Aug 6, 2026 4 min read

body_class() Adds search-results to <body>, and My Whole Search Page Got Squished

Aug 6, 2026 4 min read

Raw <?php Tags Printing on the Page? FSE Template Parts Never Execute PHP

Aug 4, 2026 7 min read

The Color Belongs to post_content, Not theme.json: Editing content.raw Over REST and Patching the Seeder

Aug 4, 2026 5 min read

?error= Vanishes From $_GET: Never Name a Query Param After a WordPress Reserved Var

Aug 3, 2026 5 min read

1,343 Pages Scraped, 1,343 Identical Bodies? The article .entry-content Cascade Grabbed a Sidebar Widget

Jul 30, 2026 5 min read

post_link Filter Is Correct but Some Posts Stay at Root? Permalink Manager Lite Overrides at Priority 99

Jul 26, 2026 5 min read

New Block Theme Patterns Not Showing Up? WordPress Caches the Pattern List in a site-transient for a Week

Jul 26, 2026 5 min read

WordPress Staging on a Subpath 301-Redirects to Production? Two Rewrite Blocks Stacked in .htaccess

Jul 23, 2026 5 min read

Abandoned Checkout Locks Booking Dates Forever? booking_payment_failed Fires With Zero Listeners

Jul 23, 2026 5 min read

Property Edit Page 500s Only During PHP Shutdown? esc_textarea() Got an Array house_rules, Not a String

Jul 23, 2026 5 min read

get_page_by_path('add-property') Returns null for a Nested Child Page? Production Ballooned to 137 Duplicate Pages

Jul 23, 2026 4 min read

A Dead Email Domain Passes as a WordPress User? is_email() Only Checks Syntax, Not Deliverability

Jul 23, 2026 5 min read

A 1px Line Cuts Across the Hero, Only on WordPress Staging? The WP Staging Banner Shifts a Decorative ::before Into the Viewport

Jul 23, 2026 5 min read

Owner Listings Always Publish With Zero Photos? Upload Only Builds a Preview, the Publish Handler Skips gallery

Jul 22, 2026 5 min read

Checkout Always Redirects to the Homepage: empty( $property['id'] ) Is Always true Because get_property_data() Has No id Key

Jul 22, 2026 5 min read

One Availability Toggle Wipes Every Block? A JSON String Meta Read as a PHP Array

Jul 18, 2026 4 min read

"Text First, Then the Animation, Then the Text Again": gsap.set Waiting for the Preloader

Jul 17, 2026 4 min read

admin_init Lockdown Silently Kills EVERY Front-End Form (0 Members Ever Registered)

Jul 17, 2026 4 min read

A Homemade Login Throttle Locks Out Real Users: Office IP Collateral From a Bot Spray

Jul 17, 2026 4 min read

wp_mail Dead on a Raw EC2: 'Could not instantiate mail function' and the Passwordless Google Workspace SMTP Relay

Jul 16, 2026 5 min read

Settings Field Set to 0 Snaps Back to Default? array_filter() Drops Your Legit Zero

Jul 16, 2026 4 min read

wp_mail() Silently Fails and Zero Emails Arrive? Your Managed Host Disabled PHP mail()

Jul 8, 2026 4 min read

Built a Custom Gutenberg Block but It Never Shows Up in the Inserter? The Site Runs Classic Editor

Jul 8, 2026 4 min read

Category Pages Showed 00 stories Despite Published Posts? A Leftover Seeder meta_query Was Excluding All Real Content

Jul 8, 2026 5 min read

Saving a Post Returns a 502? Synchronous media_handle_sideload() Blows Past the Edge Proxy Timeout

Jul 7, 2026 4 min read

WordPress Importer Dies Mid-Run With Cloudflare 524 A Timeout Occurred? The 100-Second Cap Is Real, Rebuild It as a Batched State Machine

Jul 7, 2026 5 min read

The EUR/USD Currency Switch Did Nothing? The Prices Were Stored as Pre-Formatted Strings Like '€450'

Jul 7, 2026 5 min read

Cleanup Script Dies With Call to undefined function on require 'wp-load.php'? Wipe WordPress via Raw mysqli Instead

Jul 7, 2026 4 min read

xmlrpc.php Still Returns 200 After add_filter('xmlrpc_enabled', '__return_false')? That Filter Does Not Kill XML-RPC

Jul 3, 2026 7 min read

A Dimmed Row Is Not Authorization: An Owned Profile Was Still Claimable Through a Direct URL

Jun 30, 2026 4 min read

Naming a 2nd WP_Query $more/$page Collides With a WordPress Global, a Fatal That Masquerades as Out-of-Memory

Jun 29, 2026 4 min read

Your PHP Filter Runs but the Page Is Empty? A Theme Missing page.php/search.php Silently Falls to index.php

Jun 28, 2026 5 min read

A Custom Post Type at the Root URL (/title/) Falls Through to the Homepage, Fix It With Per-Slug Rewrite Rules

Jun 26, 2026 4 min read

$wpdb->prepare() With an Array Param Returns Empty on WordPress 7.0

Jun 25, 2026 4 min read

The get_theme_mod($id, $fallback) Trap: The Fallback Arg Silently Overrides Your Registered Default

Jun 25, 2026 4 min read

PHP 8 Fatal: 'Attempt to read property on array' When a Getter Returns an Array

Jun 25, 2026 4 min read

Reusing $x Silently Wiped the Content When Porting React to PHP

Jun 25, 2026 4 min read

Smart Quotes (“ ”) Sneaking Into PHP Took Down the Site: A Baffling Parse Error

Jun 25, 2026 4 min read

Class 'WP_List_Table' not found: How One Always-Loaded File 500s Your Entire Frontend

Jun 22, 2026 3 min read

Two add_rewrite_rule Calls With the Same Regex Don't Chain, the Second Overwrites the First

Jun 22, 2026 3 min read

strtoupper Turned a WordPress Category Chip Into 'BANKING & NEOBANKS'

Jun 18, 2026 3 min read

PHP 8 Bug: 'floatval' as a sanitize_callback Causes a Fatal Error in WordPress

Jun 18, 2026 3 min read

update_post_meta Silently Strips Your JSON Slashes (and Hides the Bug for Days)