17 replies to this topic

[digamama]

Hello all, my blog -- formerly on PageLines -- crashed a few weeks ago. All of my Pagelines formatting disappeared and the only element preserved was the carousel at the top. I built it again with a different drag and drop system, but any idea why this happened? I really loved my Pagelines.

[Henry Perkins]

It's hard to see what happened now, but there are options to restore your Pagelines site back its former glory. If you were to go to Pagelines > Account > Import / Export, you can choose to export several different settings, including your meta settings and drag and drop system. Hope this helps for the future!

[Rob]

Thanks Henry for your insight. Digamama, PageLines is basically a framework and wouldn't crash any sites. Crashes usually occur as a result of bad custom code, insufficient memory (a hosting issue), bad hosting (where the host provides shared resources and your site suffers for it); deprecated plugins that create conflicts; PHP/MySQL failures (a server issue, usually) among others. My own site crashed every day in November (around Thanksgiving) with PlatformPro as the theme, but it wasn't PlatformPro causing it. The traffic was using so many resources that the host's memory settings didn't allow the volume of traffic. Ultimately, changing hosts and moving to a dedicated server produced a totally stable, resource-rich site. Since PageLines is just the framework, it doesn't do anything that could possibly crash the site. Memory use from Framework is limited, and while it writes custom code to the database, it doesn't manage WP's relationship with the database. You should ask your host about memory resources, shared resources (if you're on a shared or VPS account).

[Rob]

Oh, the restoration was relatively easy. I kept backups of the database (though it wasn't affected) and all my PageLines settings, just as Henry described. You should consider doing a weekly backup from PageLines > Account > Import/Export as well as from Dashboard > Tools > Export (the posts and databases). It's also a good idea to FTP into the site and download it once a week to your local computer so you have all the images, plugins, etc.

[WebWerx]

@digamama: Or get a solid host who does all that crap for you! cc @rangelone ;-)

[Rob]

Yes, a good host should make backups daily. Whether they do is another topic for discussion.

[digamama]

Thanks to you both! I really love the feedback I get in these forums. And, of course, I have another question I'll be posting in sheer moments! In the meantime, I'd be interested in learning what hosting services the general community relies on and if they're happy with them.

[WebWerx]

I am using WPENGINE. So far so good. All they do is WordPress. More expensive than others. But worth every penny we spend.

[Rob]

I use a dedicated hosting package with iWeb. I believe they also just introduced some reasonably priced Cloud servers. But if you're not familiar with self-managing a server, look into WebWerx suggestion.

[alanf]

It seems to me that there are many users who purchased the PLFrameWork with little or no experience of the technical aspects of CSS etc. They purchased because of the advertised "ease of use, drag and drop, no code knowledge needed" etc. After reading all the posts in this thread and all the myriad of posts related to the problems brought on by upgrading I would really appreciate someone at Pagelines issuing a "Best Practice" document with due regard to what I've said above. Something along the lines of........... 1. Before upgrading to issue 2.xxxxx do this, export this, backup this and so on. 2. Upgrade to issus 2.xxxxx 3. Check site for problems...if problems then do this, import this, and this etc. Also see my post which has been acknowledged and hopefully in hand asap..

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[Danny]

Hi Alanf, Thank you for providing this feedback but I assumed this was common knowledge to do frequent backups and backup before updating to a new version of Wordpress/PageLines. I would actually recommend having a mirror of your live site locally using MAMP, WAMP or XAMPP and perform the upgrade there before hand. I have added this to my notes for items to be added to our documentation.

[alanf]

Thanks Danny really appreciate your adding this whole "Best Practice" area to documentation. Judging by the discussions about problems associated with upgrading it looks like a lot of folk just upgrade live sites. Not knowing anything about MAMP, WAMP or XAMPP I thought I'd look around for tools that may make this whole test environment thing easier. Have you or anyone heard of or used this - Instant Wordpress -

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Potentially if this works then it may make everyone's life a little easier when upgrading. I would like to see PageLines actually taking the lead on this and including tested tools like this one in the documented approach to best practice as it seems so important. Also highlighting recommended hosting companies that include back up and restore functionality as part of their service etc.

[Jenny]

I haven't heard of instant wordpress, but this is an informative topic for sure!

[alanf]

Hello again Danny and simple mama Apart from Instant Wordpress... You could also check out the video at the Duplicator plug in site

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and here

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and simple mama with an eye on your CSS plug in ...check out the use of Snagit and Google Chrome developer tools for highlighting CSS code here

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So Danny and the folks at Pagelines plenty to look at for what you guys recommend in your upcoming documentation on the area of best practice.

[Rob]

Thank you Alan for the great feedback and suggestions.

[brempfer]

Question: Had one of my sites go down on GoDaddy. They told my client that they had restored it (they had) but it had something wrong with it.
I looked and they restoration had Pagelines Framework as the theme instead of the Base theme. I promoted the Base theme back into position and the site crashed.
My client is in a dinner meeting and I would love to get this sorted before he gets out...

I can't get into the back end through wp-admin. Clues as to how to get the theme back in place so I can work on figuring out what it is about base theme that makes things wonky?

[brempfer]

OK Answering my own question. Got access to the site via ftp. Renamed the pagelines folder to pagelinesold which caused Wordpress to go looking for a "default theme" (twenty Ten or whatever) THAT got me back in.

Killed the old "base theme" in the Appearance > Themes
killed all duplicated themes of pagelines and deleted the folders through ftp
Left one in place and ran the update to 2.3.5 (in retrospect, I probably should have deleted all and re - uploaded the them rather than just update).
Redownloaded Base from the store pagelines > store > themes >top free

Activated Base (no crashy this time)

Opened appearance > editor and began to cut the .css back in a few at a time to test and see if there was anything wonky
Seems to work

If anybody has suggestions as to where I might go look in the database to see if there is anything in there that is bad, let me know.

[catrina]

Glad you got it up and running again!