Help – Plugins not showing – unknown problem?

  • Resolved Knordelia

    (@knordelia)


    8 years ago

    1. Error description (current situation):

    I can normally install plugins either manually or via the Dashboard. When I try to activate a plugin I get an message stating that the plugin has no valid header. In w-admin/plugins.php I don’t have any plugins listed although the folders with all the data are there (checked it via FTP).

    So far I could not find any solution.

    2. This is how it all came to this situation:

    Today I wanted to update some plugins after several weeks have passed since I last did it. Updating them via Dashboard failed to my surprise. There came an error message which I can’t exactly remember, it was something about permission denied or similar. Anyway it lead me to change some chmod and chown settings.

    The result was that the plugins allegedly updated, but there was also an error message. I can’t remember that exactly either, but I got the impression that it has something to do with W3 Total Cache. So when I wanted to go to wp-admin/plugins.php at that time I received an error message approximately like this (in total 2 lines):

    wp-includes/load.php can’t open or sth, permission denied in wp-settings.php line 21

    So then I removed the W3 plugin (could not deactivate it, as I couldn’t get to the plugins Dashboard) via FTP. Also I removed all other files and htaccess entries as describer here.

    And now it is like describes above. I have removed also other plugins, but I can’t install and activate any plugin and they don’t show up in the plugins.php list. Also I renistalled WordPress and changed the Theme, but it didn’t help.

    Is there anything I can do to fix this issue without losing my website?

    I have a database backup from All in One WP Security.

    I really appreciate any help here since I could not find anything on exactly this problem.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
  • Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    Also try:
    – Flushing any caching plugins you might be running, as well as server and/or browser caches. Not just your browser, but any op cache or content network cache as well such as Cloudflare. That will solve many weird JavaScript issues.
    – resetting the plugins folder by FTP. Also remember to deactivate any plugins in the mu-plugins folder (if you have created such folder). The easiest way is to rename that folder to mu-plugins-old.

    Thread Starter Knordelia

    (@knordelia)

    Thanks for the reply.

    I tried as you suggested, but it is still not working. I tried to activate a plugin again after installation and I still get this message “The plugin does not have a valid header.”

    Also I don’t have any plugin installed currently – I’ve deleted them all from the plugins folder. Manually, as I could not deactivate and uninstall them, because I didn’t get into the wp-admin/plugins.php anymore.

    I also deleted all of the W3 Total Cache plugin as described here, as I thought this was the culprit.

    Could there be something else in the htaccess file? Earlier I deleted all entries from “All in one WP Security”, but this didn’t change anything either back then.

    Damn…I really don’t know what to do anymore.

    Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    Are you getting this error for ALL plugins or just one particular
    plugin?

    • This reply was modified 8 years ago by t-p.
    Thread Starter Knordelia

    (@knordelia)

    Unfortunately I get this for every plugin I try to activate after installation – the same error message.

    Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    – If all the above steps do not resolve the issue, then try MANUALLY updating. Download a fresh copy of the WordPress .zip file to your computer, unzip it, and use that to copy up all files and folders EXCEPT the wp-config.php file and the /wp-content/ directory. You may need to delete the old wp-admin and wp-includes folders and files on your server before uploading the new ones. Please read the Manual Update directions first.
    – Backup: If you haven’t already done, always backup everything (including your database) before doing any actions, just in case something really goes wrong. You can never have enough backups!

    Thread Starter Knordelia

    (@knordelia)

    Thanks, I will try that today.

    Thread Starter Knordelia

    (@knordelia)

    Okay.

    Merely following the WordPress guide on the manual update didn’t solve the problem.

    I also had to delete all the other files and folder via FTP.

    I made a backup before, so I could easily upload them again. But somewhere there was the mistake.

    Thanks.

    Topic can be closed.

    Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    Glad you got it resolved ??

    Thread Starter Knordelia

    (@knordelia)

    Me too ?? Thanks.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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