plugin setting page is blank with WP 4.4

Thanks for your report; I regret the trouble you’re having with the MLA Settings screen.

If you have access to your site’s error log, it would be great to know if there are any MLA-related error messages in the log.

MLA 2.20 and 2.21 are almost identical, so that’s probably not significant. You could try going back to MLA v2.15 to see if that helps; click here to download that version: MLA v2.15 ZIP archive

One common cause of “blank screen” issues is the amount of memory allocated to PHP and WordPress. Here is a recent topic with more information and suggestions for investigating/resolving memory problems:

Can’t access mla-menu page

You can increase the PHP memory allocation for WordPress by editing your wp-config.php file; this should work in a hosted environment. You can find more information in this Codex article:

Editing wp-config.php

The default value is 40MB, so increasing it to 64MB or 100MB should help. This works in my hosted environment and should work for you. Let me know if that helps.

You can also try loading another tab of the Settings screen to see if the problem is specific to the General tab. You should see a URL ending with these arguments:

... /options-general.php?page=mla-settings-menu-general&mla_tab=general

Try changing that to:

... /options-general.php?page=mla-settings-menu-documentation&mla_tab=documentation

and loading the Documentation tab. Does that work?

If you rule out memory issues and still have a conflict, let me know and I will investigate further. I haven’t had an opportunity to test under PHP 7, but I will work on that shortly. When you write “Litespeed” I think you mean the “LiteSpeed Web Server” from LiteSpeed Technologies – is that right? I do not have any direct experience with that or an easy way to test it.

I will leave this topic unresolved until I hear back from you. Thanks for any additional information you can give me.

Hi David, thanks for the assistance. Making some progress, Going directly to the documentation tab works, I was able to view all tabs other then general, it is still blank.

My php memory is at 256MB, memory plugin shows 35MB is used of 256. (same plugins installed, used to be about 55MB so this PHP7 is more efficient)

Other things I tried, were switching to a default theme = no change
I also tried lowering the php memory to 128, no change
different browsers
I uninstalled and deleted the files and installed MLA 2.15, has the same issue.

And yes thats the litespeed web server tech I was rearing to.

The default upload folder name is also changed from its default name, which is new this time around if that maters. WP-content is also changed away from its default, but it was also changed and working fine in the previous install, so shouldn’t be it.

Also no errors in the log related to MLA

Is there a way for me to import my MLA backup still without the general tab?

Thanks for your update and for taking the time to try all of the experiments I suggested; very helpful.

My best guess at this moment is that PHP version 7 is somehow involved. I will accelerate my efforts to set up a test system for this and see if I can make any progress.

You asked “Is there a way for me to import my MLA backup still without the general tab?” The code for importing an MLA settings file is in the PHP code file for the General tab, so I can’t suggest an immediate workaround in MLA.

Do have experience using phpMyAdmin to maintain your database? If so, I can give you some instructions for exporting the MLA options from one site and importing them to another. I’ve never tried that but I can work it out if that would help.

I do have some experience with phpMyAdmin though I have a few notes to set things back manually, most important changes are in IPTC which I can get into now. Not sure if there is anything under general that I would be missing, if it turns out there is I will get back to you to you and try that route importing into the db.

Thanks

Looks like I will need to import my old settings. I am missing categories in my wordpress, I only have att category and tags. Unless I can just tick that off by it self in the database.

While trying to find a work around for the missing categories I may have found a bug. Since I didnt have the choice of a main category I created a att category that would be it then made all its sub categories parent to it. Which worked fine and let me group select but as soon as I uploaded new photos it did not apply them to the same att categories. It created double entries with new slug (marking it -2) so I was getting double filter buttons for each category in justified image grid.

I will work on a phpMyAdmin/manual workaround for you.

I am still working through setting up a PHP7 test system, but have been delayed by some hard disk errors on my machine (never fun).

If you have access to your wp-config.php file, it would be great if you can modify it to show PHP warning and notice messages, which might tell me something. Try adding:

define('WP_DEBUG', true );
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', false ); // or true to log messages to wp-content/debug.log
define('WP_DEBUG_DISPLAY', true ); // or false if you must suppress display of warnings/notices

If you can do that and get any messages. post them here. Thanks for your patience and your help!

I enabled debugging and When I go to the general tab I get this error.

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Access to undeclared static property: MLAOptions::$value in ……/plugins/media-library-assistant/includes/class-mla-settings.php:1184 Stack trace: #0 ……../plugins/media-library-assistant/includes/class-mla-settings.php(1451): MLASettings::mla_compose_option_row(‘taxonomy_suppor…’, Array) #1 ……./plugins/media-library-assistant/includes/class-mla-settings.php(3235): MLASettings::_compose_general_tab() #2 ……/wp-includes/plugin.php(525): MLASettings::mla_render_settings_page(”) #3 ……/wp-admin/admin.php(236): do_action(‘settings_page_m…’) #4 ……/wp-admin/options-general.php(10): require_once(‘…./…’) #5 {main} thrown in ……./plugins/media-library-assistant/includes/class-mla-settings.php on line 1184

Thanks for making the debug changes and for your update with the error message; excellent! I wish I’d thought of this sooner.

I have uploaded a new Development Version dated 20151215 that contains a fix for the MLA bug in PHP version 7. I will continue my efforts to set up and test with my own PHP 7 version, but this fix should give you some immediate relief. To get the Development Version, follow the instructions in this earlier topic:

Shortcode not working in (special) widget

It would be great if you can try the Development Version and let me know if the fix works for you. Thanks for your help and your patience.

I installed the development version and it fixed the issue with the blank general tab. I have added the other categories section and remapped all the IPTC and so far everything is fine with this version.

Nice work, thanks.

Thanks for your update with the good news. If you find any other PHP 7 issues before I do, please post them here.

I will mark this topic resolved when the fixes go out in the next MLA version.

Hello David,

thanks for this amazing plugin, and for making it available for free.

I just wanted to conform that your most recent development version 20160102 did also fix the blank setting page issue for me, I am using PHP7 too.

Looking forward to the final release, thanks again.

I have already installed version 2.22 and it does fix the PHP7 issue (as did version 20160102). Thanks for the quick implementation. Your support as plugin author is exemplary, in my opinion.