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All Plugins + Folder Just Disappeared? Not Good*
cpositive
New
Hello, I just tried installing the plugin "preview post"...it showed up in my plugins folder...it didn't enable...I realized it was an old version so I hit remove on the plugin...all of a sudden my entire list of plugins is gone...hours upon hours of work...my functioning site is now missing a ton of stuff...I check my server and it erased the entire folder? Please help...I have zero clue what happened and I need all those plugins back...My dashboard looks super basic now....how can this happen by hitting remove on a plugin?? I have been messing with plugins for months and never had an issue.
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don't ever use remove from the dashboard
It has been mentioned before that it has the capacity to remove the entire plugin folder depending on your site's file permissions and has been corrected in 2.1b2 (I believe). Unfortunately the code was not removed (to prevent this type of mishap). in vanilla 2.0.18.10,
you are not alone - it has happened to 3 or 4 other people.
restore from source backup you made or
best you can do is download core again to get all the plugins (including htmlawed) and then download the necessary plugins you need from the add-ons section.
I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.
Sad thing is...I just launched the site to the general public today...and now I have traffic and the site is horrid...
This is insane...I knew I should have deleted the plugin on the server level not using the remove feature. Thank you Peregrine...I can't tell you how maddening this is...as I had edited many of the plugins to my liking...now I don't know where to start.
unfortunate indeed. always make backups to your source if you make changes, and make backups of database periodically.
http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/23903/github-bug-1609-i-removed-a-plugin-from-the-dashboard-and-all-my-plugins-disappeared
http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/21192/which-files-should-i-back-up
I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.
Ugh! I wish there was a so sorry reaction ....:(
Yes I was one of the folks this happened to. I was hoping the Vanilla team would address this as a major bug in 2.0 .
Try to get your host to replace the plugin folder from the backups they have. Your host should have a backup of your site Call them and tell them what happened and to replace the entire plugin folder for you. Then they need to set the right permissions for you . They only keep the back up for short time so hurry and get to them. That is what I did and some others. manually replacing works too but you will need to edit them again.
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when dealing with plugins. better to disable first. and then at the file folder level delete the folder and source if you no longer want the source hanging around.
make sure you get HtmlLawed plugin from core or backup - people often overlook in restoration and it is needed.
I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.
Will do for sure Peregrine. Thank you for the advice.
Try to get your host to replace the plugin folder from the backups they have.
So my host did not have a backup...In the process of transferring the plugins folder from the core and installing the rest of the add on plugins manually...should be fun! Second time around should be a breeze!!! Yikes!
Oh that is unfortunate, and strange. Most decent hosts take backups of the sites they host every 3 days or so. It is how they protect their customer's content. If their servers crash and there is data loss they can replace it with a backup. It is irresponsible in my opinion for a host to not take backups.
May be a paid service to keep specific backups of your site, but they must have a backup of everyone. In my case it cost me 89 bucks to get them to fish my plugins out from their backup.
It won't take you as long now that you know what how to edit them. I would make a backup of the plugins folder called old.plugins and save them there just in case.
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So I uploaded the core plugins...then I uploaded all the plugins I had installed as addons...much to my surprise...every single one when uploaded was enabled automatically and had all the settings and changes that I made prior to the deletions of the entire plugins folder. I have no idea where this information would be stored as I literally uploaded zip files from my computer to the server, extracted and then my site slowly started going back to the original condition prior to deletion...anyways...I am almost 90% back already! Life is good!
Some parts of the settings of the plugins are stored in conf/config.php so therefore when you uploaded the plugins, they were enabled, etc. The styling should be done in the themes (different folder) so only the core code of the plugins should be in the /plugins folder.
Sorry to hear that you lost the plugin folder by removing a plugin from the dashboard. I would love to know which plugin it was you wanted to remove, but I guess it can be any plugin and then ... whooosh...
Don't forget to have your host set the permissions on the folder so it cannot happen again.
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I want to throw my condolences on the pile as well.
At least your config options were saved
As others mentioned, if you remove the write permissions to your plugin folder for your PHP user, the remove button won't be shown in your dashboard.
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Which is how the permissions should be in the first place.
The problem is this issue affects people who don't know better, which is the problem. The fact that that is bad knowledge get passed on is really irritating, and the cheap webhost encourage it. Not only do people not know about permission they have no idea about users and groups and how they relate to permissions.
This problem is fixed in later version, but not back ported for some reason. It should.
@cpositive make sure you are not using an javascript minifiers.
grep is your friend.
I asked Lincoln if they could fix this for 2.0 and he said they are not fixing anything on 2.0 anymore unless it is a security aspect.
I think that because it does not happen to thousands of people it is not a priority. It does not happen always. It is tied to rogue plugins that either are incompatible or generated a fatal error upon enabling and or will not disable via dashboard.
I think this is serious enough to fix. Specially if you edited many plugins.
Edit: Looks like the fix is in the pipeline https://github.com/vanillaforums/Garden/commit/ab3b98e086dd7ac4211fbce98ddb567d726d01d7
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Well it is security related. How given that statement I am unable say with any confidence that that is entirely what is happening, not in my experience.
There is so much focus on 2.1 practically to the detriment of the current version, primary concerns.
grep is your friend.
This is somewhat true. I know I personally prefer developing against 2.1+ rather than 2.0.x. The devs are still going through reported bugs for 2.0 though.
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I'm not talking about development.
grep is your friend.
What about Vanilla Porter in the Core section of the Addons page for manual backups. May not be the best, but it's acceptable for hosts without backups, particularly free hosts.
It is far more efficient to backup with a simple dump of the database than to use Porter.
It appears to have happened to me as well. In my dashboard, the only thing that appears under addons is Locales and Vanilla. I was pretty sure that there used to be a couple of items named "Plugins" and "Applications". Was I hallucinating?
As for the theory that things like this only happen to a few people. That might be a bit of a leap. If I were new to forums, and something like this happened. I would probably assume that software was broken, or unfriendly at the least.
I want something that works for me. I don't want something that will require me to add several hours to my workday just to get it working.
I've been building websites for 11 years, I spend 6-8 hours per day on them, and I'm about to give up on Vanilla, and forums in general.