Plugin still working after having been deleted

  • juliearoundtheglobe

    (@juliearoundtheglobe)


    1 year, 3 months ago

    Hello,

    I’ve downloaded your plugin and tried to use it a while back. I have to admit without really knowing how to use it properly.

    I realized it couldn’t do what I was trying to do, which was replace my tables of content.

    In the settings, I tried imputing “toc” as the search and left blank the replace part. It didn’t do anything. I deleted the plugin.

    A couple of months later, it deleted all “toc” from the entire website. It was done after the plugin was deleted (I checked when the change was made through the revision section). I fixed it, but it has done it again, deleting toc from everywhere.

    I check my database and there’s no trace of your plugin. I’m clueless as to what could be happening here. Do you have any ideas?

    Thanks for your help.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

  • Hi there!

    Better Search Replace Support Team here, Thanks for reaching out with your query we would be happy to assist

    Our plugin will only process a search and replace when you click the ‘Run Search/Replace’ button on our plugin’s page and have the ‘Run as dry run’ unchecked. It cannot process a search and replace without a user’s action.

    Since you mentioned that you searched “toc” and replaced it with a blank string, if the ‘Run as dry run’ was unchecked and you clicked the “Run Search/Replace”, our plugin would have removed/deleted the string “toc”.

    I searched “test” on my wp_posts table and left the replace as blank. It would then remove the “test” string on my pages as seen on this screenshot – https://share.getcloudapp.com/o0uJ0Y0G

    It’s possible that the search and replace worked initially but wasn’t noticed until a couple months later when the plugin was deleted. Our plugin’s search and replace also does not reflect on the page revisions.

    As per the string ‘toc’ being deleted again after you fixed the issue, could it be that an automatic backup was made when the string ‘toc’ was deleted and then it was restored to the site recently?

    Have you set up automatic database backups for the site? Perhaps you can trace there when the changes were reverted.

    Thread Starter juliearoundtheglobe

    (@juliearoundtheglobe)

    Hi,

    Thank you for the answer.

    How could it not reflect on the page revisions if it’s making a change on the page?

    I know when the changes were reverted, and there’s no database that has been restored, ever + posts that were published recently were also affected.

    I don’t see what else could be causing “toc” to disappear from everywhere. Could there be some line of code or something that stayed even once the plugin was deleted? I tried checking my database but could find anything.

    Hi @juliearoundtheglobe ,

    WordPress tries to be as secure as possible, especially with the fact that anyone can make plugins for their system, and anybody else can install and use them.

    If a plugin is installed on WordPress, they are never executed unless they are activated. If a plugin has been deactivated, and/or deleted, they are not executed.

    “How could it not reflect on the page revisions if it’s making a change on the page?”
    — Better Search Replace accesses the database directly. This means that it bypasses WordPress’ functionality of recording page revisions when a page is updated. If there is a page revision recorded, the page was edited using WordPress’ editor.

    WordPress’ page revisions shows which user made the changes. If it seems the account/s is/are compromised, we can only recommend changing your passwords immediately.

    I hope this helps. Let us know if you have any other questions.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • The topic ‘Plugin still working after having been deleted’ is closed to new replies.