Bug? Deactivated and activated plugin, all sidebar data is gone!

Thanks for your kind words.

Did you just deactivate the plugin or did you uninstall it entirely? Uninstalling the plugin will delete all data created by it.

As of version 2, you should look in wp_posts and search for items with post_type IN ('sidebar','sidebar_group')
In versions <2, you should only search for sidebar.

Then in wp_postmeta you want to find items with meta_key LIKE '_cas_%'.

If you have used taxonomy terms for your sidebar, they will be stored in wp_term_relationships, and for version 2, you should find the ones with object_id IN (<sidebar group ids>), where the ids are the ones you found before. For version one it should be object_id IN (<sidebar ids>).

Finally, in wp_options you should find one item with `option_name =
‘cas_db_version’`. This may not be necessary, but if you do not have the correct number there when running the plugin again, it will try to “update” your sidebar data, which might make it useless as it is already up to date.

Thanks – to be clear, I deactivated the plugin – it was never uninstalled…

I’ll give the database look-through a try ??

That is strange. Was it only the metadata for sidebars or were the sidebars gone too?

There is no mechanism in the plugin to remove data like that, except in uninstall.php and when a function is run in update_db.php after a plugin update.

The sidebars still appeared in the Sidebars > All Sidebars menu, and are listed in the Widgets.

If it helps to decrypt the issue, the reason I deactivated all the plugins was because my menu had gotten to reach the limit of PHP variables. It runs close to the limit, and was randomly truncating the last few items off the menu… I solved the problem by changing the limit in php.ini / .htaccess, and by cutting a few things out of the menu…

BTW, I feel a little stupid right now – turns out the widgets got moved to the ‘Inactive Widgets’. False alarm, by the looks of things. Thanks for your help all the same.