Can’t Change Privacy Setting

Adam, I’m not sure what would be causing the Fatal Error; however, I can suggest an alternative means of switching the privacy options.

Visit wp-admin/options.php on your blog. If you haven’t come across this screen before, don’t be surprised — it’s not linked to anywhere within the admin panel. It’s purpose is simply to show all of your blog’s configuration options — anything placed in the options table of your database, whether plugin, theme, or core. Be careful what you change within this screen!

Anyway, you’ll want to find the blog_public option in that list. If you want your blog to be indexed by search engines, make sure blog_public option is set to 1 and save.

Finally, visit your blog and View Source. Ensure that the following bit of code does not appear:

<meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />

Will something in this thread help for the error itself, maybe? Good luck.

Ok thanks for your replies but I have the same problem. Firstly i found nothing that you suggested in wp admin options although in wp admin options-privacy.php I found the following

<p><input id=”blog-public” type=”radio” name=”blog_public” value=”1″ <?php checked(‘1’, get_option(‘blog_public’)); ?> />
<label for=”blog-public”><?php _e(‘I would like my blog to be visible to everyone, including search engines (like Google, Sphere, Technorati) and archivers’);?></label></p>
<p><input id=”blog-norobots” type=”radio” name=”blog_public” value=”0″ <?php checked(‘0’, get_option(‘blog_public’)); ?> />
<label for=”blog-norobots”><?php _e(‘I would like to block search engines, but allow normal visitors’); ?></label></p>
<?php do_action(‘blog_privacy_selector’); ?>
</td>

That seems ok though isn’t it?
Spencer I checked out the thread you mentioned which was exactly the same type of error but the guy was very vague describing what he did so I can’t really follow. Please someone help as it’s driving me round the bend. Thanka

I didn’t mean view the PHP code of your admin panel pages. When you login to your admin panel, you can change the URL to point to options.php (in the wp-admin/ folder); on that page, you’ll be able to update the option, regardless of whether the options-privacy.php page is working properly or not.

And you might try reuploading options-privacy.php (or even the entire wp-admin/ folder) for whatever version of WordPress you are using.

Hi there

I know this frustrating but talk me through exactly what i need to do

“When you login to your admin panel, you can change the URL to point to options.php (in the wp-admin/ folder); on that page, you’ll be able to update the option, regardless of whether the options-privacy.php page is working properly or not”

Where do i exactly need to go to do this?
thanks
adam

Something like this (use your own domain name, of course):

https://www.example.com/wordpress/wp-admin/options.php

You’ll see a quite long list…

Thanks but i’m getting the same old error

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare sanitize_option() (previously declared in /home/toyota/public_html/wp-admin/options.php:13) in /home/toyota/public_html/wp-includes/formatting.php on line 1121

Make certain that you have the correct versions of all the WordPress files. When you upgraded, you may not have upgraded some of your files.

Download a fresh copy of WordPress if you need clean versions of those files.