The “Add Media” button in “edit page” does not work consistently, nor do uploads to the media library. I’ve downloaded and saved to my local computer eight support threads related to this problem, in addition to a few codex articles, and tried almost everything suggested to fix it, including:
? trying another browser
? deactivating my only plugin
? activating the default theme “twenty-twelve”
? clearing browser cache and cookies
? refreshing
? re-installing 3.5.1
? adding define(‘CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS’, false ); to the bottom of wp-config.php file (just before the require_once line),
? added define(‘SCRIPT_DEBUG’, true); just before “That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging”
None of the above helped at all.
I did not go to the trouble of searching for ghosts of deactivated plugins in File Manager, since the problem began before I’d ever installed my only plugin. Nor did I bother manually reinstalling WordPress, since the automatic install had never had a hitch, I had no reason to suspect it was incomplete. I felt that if I’d try it manually, I was far more likely to leave an incomplete installation.
If the source of this bug were simply a programming error in the latest WordPress version, then the bug would appear consistently. Intermittent malfunction makes me suspect that there is a human variable coming into play, such as something being done or omitted by the webhost.
Indeed, the support forum moderators say clearly that if problems with plugins and themes are ruled out, then it must be due to the webhost. They gave three possibilities for the webhost to fix:
1) The problem is often caused by Google Page Speed.
On some hosting environments, aggressive settings for the “mod_pagespeed” addon can break the javascript code and cause scripts to not be able to function. This can cause many problems, such as widgets not working, menus not being draggable, the customizer not working, or the media screens not being available.
To fix the issue, you will need to disable mod_pagespeed, or adjust its settings to not take effect in the wp-admin directories. You may need to ask your hosting service for help on how to do this.
In the WordPress support forums, Dreamhost says, We’re working for a fix here, and we have a couple options that are semi-perfect. Until then, though, we recommend you either leave that line in your wp-config.php or turn off pagespeed
2) contact your ISP/Host and have them look at the server permissions
3) If there is an error message that a download failed: WordPress reports that release 3.5 changed the temp directory order to prefer the system’s pre-defined temp directory instead of attempting to write into wp-content. On some badly configured hosting systems, this temp directory may be defined, but not actually writable. This causes the error message.
You can work around this by specifying a temp directory on your server with a place that you know WordPress is allowed to write files to. You can do this by adding this line of code into the wp-config.php file.
define( ‘WP_TEMP_DIR’ , ABSPATH . ‘wp-content/’ );
I’ve spent days unearthing all of this information.
Today I had a livechat with my webhost, Fatcow. The problem is intermitent, so they didn’t see it today. Unfortunately, this means I couldn’t get them to fix it on their end. The livechat representative kept on talking about how they’d corrected the login problem two days ago, which wasn’t my complaint. She told me to try downloading the latest Adobe flash version to speed up the ridiculously slow performance of the Add Media button. (Even when the media library works, it works poorly.)
Judging from all those support forum posts on this subject, there are a lot of frustrated WordPress users out there. I’ll quote what some of them are saying:
“This is awful why have they done this to a system that worked fine. It is now so slow and complicated and difficult to use. I wish I had never upgraded it is awful. Can’t get the featured images to show in the glider at the top for the featured posts they just come out black.”
“This concatenate scripts issue does not seem to work for me. I have done some testing, and it seems to be narrowing down to a database issue. Not sure why though. I did a fresh install of wp and it worked fine. I activated all plugins and it worked fine. I started to import database records and it seems fine until I add usermeta records and then it breaks. Not sure why WP aren’t rushing out a fix on this.”
The eight threads I downloaded are only the tip of the iceberg – there are more, plus plenty of people chiming in on other people’s ongoing threads saying they are experiencing the same thing.
I thought maybe I could get relief by switching hosts, but I see that customers of several webhosts are having this problem. And unless you answer my request to tell me what capabilities the media uploader requires from a webhost, I have no way to judge who to pick.
I think that the WordPress 3.5.1 Media Library (both upload and “add media”) presents a significant challenge to webhosts and webmasters.
Wouldn’t it make sense to fix it on the WordPress end?
