WordPress Install Doesn’t Work!

  • Wade

    (@wadedeveloper)


    5 years, 7 months ago

    1st, I have been programming for over 15 years, and code in a dozen languages. I always stayed away from WordPress, for reasons such as these. However, I am TRYING to give it a chance!

    I am building a site for a client, who is older, and really needs an easy to edit site. He wants to be able to edit the content easier.

    I installed WordPress a few weeks ago originally for this project. I believe it was 5.2.2 as well.

    I created a child of a theme to make custom modifications. Everything was good.

    A couple of plugins had updates. Updated them. The sky fell! <– very common problem with WordPress!

    So I made a few backups of the custom work, and nuked the entire project (directory, database). I created them again, put WordPress back, and went to run the installer. It gets to step 2, and just spins forever. — weird, everything is exactly the same as before and it installed just fine!

    There is 1 error in the error log:

    [Tue Jul 30 18:17:44.873868 2019] [php7:notice] [pid 3118] [client 127.0.0.1:49798] WordPress database error Unknown column 'wp_' in 'field list' for query SELECT wp_, referer: https://[redacted].local/wp-admin/setup-config.php?step=1

    I seriously just had this exact version of WordPress installed 2 weeks ago! Now it won’t install!

    It appears all the tables were created and populated, the wp-config file created.. yet it just hangs?

    I could probably just ignore it.. but this is an indicator that there will probably be a domino effect of issues.

    I doubled the memory, execution time, everything. Same effect.

    I am about to just go back to Laravel or Yii2. I can already predict in less than 6 months, updating something, and the entire site breaking.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • The sky fell? You don’t mention what that looks like. There was likely no reason to scratch everything and start over.

    So, why didn’t you just read the error message and fix that?
    It sounds like the second install was affected by the first, and it can’t go further with bad inputs.

    Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.remarpro.com Admin

    Look in the wp-config.php file. What’s in there? Not the username and password, but the rest of the file.

    Reinstalling doesn’t actually “fix” anything, so you shouldn’t have started over.

    Thread Starter Wade

    (@wadedeveloper)

    As I stated, this is a local development project. All of the customizations, were in the child-theme. Making a backup of it, and starting a new project, isn’t a big deal.

    Also, as mentioned in my OP, The wp-config.php file was populated correctly (db info, key/salts, etc), as well as the database. I even received the WordPress welcome email.

    The installer just spun forever.

    The only error reported was: Unknown column 'wp_' in 'field list' for query SELECT wp_

    It looks like it tried to run a SELECT query on wp_, the table prefix with an empty column name.

    Thread Starter Wade

    (@wadedeveloper)

    Update:

    So, I nuked my entire XAMPP install and started over. After backing up specific files and server config changes, of course.

    It seems like maybe once a year, XAMPP just dies. Usually I notice it when my Laravel or Yii2 migrations won’t run. I don’t recall what error they gave last time, but this time those migrations still worked, which is why I thought my local server was ok.

    Next time this happens, I will give up on XAMPP and switch to Docker.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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