All Categories Erased. Sort Of.

  • I’m not sure if it is something I did or not. But I posted an article today and when I logged into my dashboard go to my categories page, all of my categories have been erased.

    I thought I could just go ahead and add them back, but when I try to add say “Featured” as a new category, it tells me it already exists. Same thing if I try to add back in say, “Videos” or any of the other ones. It tells me I can’t add that category because it already exists. Somewhere.

    Obviously the front page of my site is screwy now, All the posts are there and their fine, they are just not tied to any categories at all.

    I should mention that I am still very much a wordpress novice, so if anyone has any advice, please be kind with technical explanations ??

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

  • Try using phpMyAdmin to repair your database tables.

    Thread Starter kaeos

    (@kaeos)

    Okay, found my phpMy Admin on my cpanel. Aaaaand I am clueless here.

    I can see the databases I have (2 of them apparently) and I can see within one of them where the tables are located, but honestly I know if I mess with this I am going to screw the whole setup.

    Would it make sense for me to simply reinstall wordpress?

    I wouldn’t do a reinstall.

    https://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-quickie-repair-mysql-tables-in-phpmyadmin

    Also might make sure you know how to backup your files and database…WordPress Backups.

    Thread Starter kaeos

    (@kaeos)

    First and foremost let me say thank you Michael, your help is more than appreciated sir.

    Okay, followed your link and performed the table repair as suggested, had no effect. I also went in a deleted 2 plug in’s that I realized were installed the same day the problem started, no effect. Just trying to rule things out.

    Here is something interesting I noticed. IN the help article you provided, I looked closely at the screen shots of that person’s database tables and there was one tabled labeled “wp-categories” and in another thread I noted something similar like “cat2post”.

    When I look at all my database tables in phpMyAdmin I do not see any of the tables that look anything like they would be related to categories. So is it possible the table for the categories itself could have been deleted? If that is the case, how could wordpress say those categories still exist?

    I feel like I am getting closer to the answer here but I am missing something obvious, I can feel it, lol. Any assitional help/advice would be appreciated, of course.

    Well there WAS at one time categories and cat2post. Now that stuff in in the terms tables.

    If you’ve repaired your tables and that didn’t fix the problem, I would deactivate ALL plugins and change to the WordPress Default Theme to see if that resolves the issue.

    Thread Starter kaeos

    (@kaeos)

    Nada.

    All plug in’s deactivated. Flipped to default theme. When I look at the Dashboard it says there are 13 categories.

    When I go to the categories page, there are none showing and none, of course on any of the posts.

    Maybe try updating your permalinks.

    If that doesn’t fix it, if you have an .htaccess file temporarily rename it.

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