Accidentally put wordpress files into a folder – site crashed

  • Hi guys.

    Unfortunately I’m a bigger noob at server hosting than I thought. While using cPanel, I saw that the Softaculous reported multiple updates, one of them being wordpress. I clicked to see the update, but it said it can’t find the wordpress directory because it was looking for /wordpress. I thought that if I placed my wordpress files (wp-content, wp-admin etc.) from the original install location into a new folder called “wordpress” it should find the directory and let me update it. Unfortunately this totally destroyed my website, causing critical errors and internal server errors.

    I managed to restore previous backups, but for some reason the only way the 500 error disappeared was to revert the PHP version back to 7.3 (it was 7.4 before). Now however, the frontend works, but elementor has a 400 server error and won’t let me change anything, plugins are not updating because they can’t find folders and I just feel like something is definitely wrong.

    I replaced the woocommerce folder in /plugins to a fresh install, and also wordpress /wp-includes and /wp-admin. Deactivating the plugins and theme didn’t help either.

    Long story short: I was thinking that by changing the location of the files, maybe some path got corrupted that wasn’t replaced in the restore. I was hoping to find the culprit or at least somehow create a fresh install of wordpress without losing my data (as I have hundreds of products in woocommerce and thousands of images).

    I know this is a very specific problem, so any help is appreciated.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • It’s good you have backups, it’s worth asking if you restored both your Database and Home Directory from the same date? If you only restore one of those it can create the kind of issues you are describing.

    Thread Starter stecey2

    (@stecey2)

    Thank you for your reply. Both of the restores are from the same date, also tried another date, but same problem.

    Thread Starter stecey2

    (@stecey2)

    Update: hosting company managed to change php back to 7.4 but I am still having the same elementor 400 server error when trying to update pages.

    I have tried using safemode, deativating themes and plugins and even flushing dns, clearing cache. Even on new pages I get pretty far on creating content and then suddenly I get a server error out of nowhere.

    What does your hosting error log say? The exact urls that are giving the 4xx errors should show up there, as well as any other errors.

    Also, does “site health” on the WordPress dashboard say any PHP modules are missing? Sometimes changing PHP version does not install all the modules you would need.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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