Could the iThemes Security plugin in do this?

  • I’ve had my site up and running with the iThemes Security plugin installed for 18 months and have had no issues. However, in the past 24 yrs, I’ve suddenly lost all the formatting on my site — twice (ie my site basically looked like it had no theme installed — it lost the colors, borders, etc). This has happened without me making any changes whatsoever to my site or plugins.

    Both times the ‘fix’ was to disable and then reactivate the iThemes plugin but I don’t understand why the plugin would be the culprit. I’ve submitted a support ticket to iThemes and am waiting for their response but thought someone in this forum might be able to shed some light on this issue.

    I’ve also chatted with both HostGator and GoDaddy and they’re both saying it’s not an issue on their end causing the problem.

    Has anyone experienced a complete loss of formatting and if so, what was the cause and how did you fix it?

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

  • Do you have any caching plugins? (Or does that plugin cache?)

    Thread Starter turtledove100

    (@turtledove100)

    Yes – I use W3 Total Cache. But neither iThemes or W3 has had an update recently so I can’t figure out any plugin that I’ve been using for a long time and haven’t updated recently would all of a sudden cause problems.

    So try clearing W3TC – might also be the way that plugin behaves on the server your site is on.

    Thread Starter turtledove100

    (@turtledove100)

    Thanks WPyogi. I’m in the habit of always clearing my caches after any changes and if anything doesn’t look right so that was the first thing I tried — before deactivating and reactivating the iThemes Security plugin.

    If it was due to the way the plugin was behaving on the server side, wouldn’t HostGator pick up on that?

    Not necessarily – given that the problem is intermittent. Unfortunately, those kinds of problems are hard to track down sometimes. But if it’s happening on the site without you doing anything…that starts looking like a server issue. (Hosting companies would prefer it’s not their problem…). You may have to start deactivating plugins to see if that helps prevent or resolve the problem.

    The other thing you could do is ask HG how to access the server error logs and see what shows up when this happened (if you know the exact time/date) – or at least do that in the future if it happens again.

    But, the iThemes support should also be able to tell you if their plugin might be related…

    Thread Starter turtledove100

    (@turtledove100)

    Good idea about the server error log. I know about what time it happened so I’ll get on with HG and get the logs. Thanks!

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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