Deactivating plugin broke my site

Hi @winedrop,

Thank you for your message.

What do you mean after deactivating the plugin it breaks your website? Please describe the problem in more detail and send me screenshots.

Best,
Mateusz

Hi Mateusz,

Thank you for the speedy response. Please find attached – activated, then deactivated white screen, then after a minute how the site looks. I have activated it again so that the site isnt broken but really need to deactivate to run tests. thanks

@winedrop How is it possible that after deactivation, the plugin damages your website? It’s impossible. When the plugin is inactive, it doesn’t work, so it can’t affect your website. Technically, I can’t explain it – how can something that is not active break the page?

I dont know, that is why I came to this thread for help ?? I am trying to find why, one thing I can see is all my images in media library are detached for some reason even though they are all still visible on site, so maybe it is why when I deactivate the plugin they do not show? Does the plugin detach them when activated by any chance?

@winedrop Could you please deactivate the plugin now so I can check it myself?

@mateuszgbiorczyk it is deactivated now and cache is cleared. please can you let me know as soon as you have checked so that I can activate it again

Thank you @winedrop,

Neither CSS nor JavaScript files are loading on your website. This is totally weird because my plugin doesn’t affect these files in any way even when it works. Please see how many errors are in the Dev Tools console.

I don’t know what to say to you. This is something that completely amazes me. Please contact your hosting administrator and ask why these files are not loading. I can’t help you – all I can logically know is that if my plugin is inactive, it doesn’t affect your website in any way.

Thanks for the feedback @mateuszgbiorczyk. It is really strange. I have activated it again now so that you can compare the dev tools console once activated. It literally somehow impacts my entire site.

I have already contacted my host admin simultaneously to see if they can see why it is happening in the backend. If I get an answer I will update here and if you can think of a reason let me know. I also noticed that only images uploaded in the past year are detached, the older ones are mostly attached in the media library, but that isnt the major issue I dont think.

Thanks

Hi @mateuszgbiorczyk, here is the feedback below from my server host. unfortunately the plugin does indirectly break my site and I now need a developer to try and fix it. Also worth noting that when I try the other advanced plugin settings like disabling rewrite and pass thru etc it causes the same issue as when I deactivate it.

Feedback from Server host:

Please note that the WEBP format is not officially supported by cPanel which is why there is the need for image conversion. When the images are converted with the help of the Converter for Media plugin, the resulting data is stored inside the location of the plugin folder which is “https://winedrop.co.za/wp/wp-content/plugins/themify-wc-product-filter/public/js/wpf-public.js?ver=1.3.9?net::ERR_ABORTED 404 (Not Found)”. You can refer to the same in the snapshot attached. Thus when the plugin is deactivated, the query to fetch data from the plugin folder gets denied which causes the 404 error resulting in issues with CSS and JS scripts and the white screen issue. You should either set the plugin active or check for other methods for conversion with the help of a developer. As we are not into coding and development, we can only suggest you use the GD library for WEBP support.

the plugin does indirectly break my site

How does it break your website? What exactly does it do according to your hosting support? I need specific information. In my opinion, what your hosting technical support wrote to you is a collection of false information.

Could you send me a screenshot of the Help Center tab in the plugin’s settings? I will check it because in this tab I have information about the status of your website. Please send me these screenshots by e-mail (hello(at)mattplugins.com) as there may be confidential information there.

@winedrop I have some idea what could be the source of the problem. My plugin adds lines like this in the .htaccess file in the /wp-content/ directory:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteOptions Inherit
</IfModule>

When the plugin is deactivated, these rules from the .htaccess file are removed. You probably have a custom directory structure on your server and these lines are needed. This directory setup was done when you were using my plugin. If you didn’t have my plugin, loading CSS, JS files and images from /wp-content/ directory wouldn’t work.

Finally, it’s not like my plugin is breaking your website – my plugin and its rules made loading files from /wp-content/ directory possible at all.

Try adding the following code to the .htaccess file in the /wp-content/ directory at the very beginning of the file or at the very end of the file:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteOptions Inherit
</IfModule>

Please let me know if this solves the problem.