WP 5.3 causes PHP warnings

If anyone else hits this I was able to fix by editing the wp_config.php and changing the line:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);

to:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);

Maybe the 5.3 update changed this.

Me too.
Thanks @astro1999
Wondering if any answers yet? Pros & Cons of doing what @astro1999 did?

As I indicated above -I am having this problem too.

On another forum someone said:

I just renamed that php file in question, and the problem disappeared. Not sure if it might have broken something else though. The WP codex isn’t very helpful on what that file actually does. Any further hints or clues would be appreciated.

and another:

I suspect it may be a symptom of something deeper; i.e. something trying to use FTP to modify a WordPress file for some reason. Possibly a plugin?

Thoughts?

Here too. It started a day ago for me.

@laptophobo the common thread seems to be a plugin that causes the issues. Try disabling all plugins, then enable them one by one until you find the culprit. In my case, it was the WP-DISABLE plugin. I heard from another user that “Popup Maker” was also guilty. If you post here which plugin it was in your case, that may help others with a similar issue!

Yes – for me it was Popup Maker. So two plugins identified so far:
WP-DISABLE & Popup Maker

I narrowed it down to All-in-One events by Time.ly plugin. When WP 5.3 activated, all hell broke loose.

It is now happening for me on another site that does not have any of the plugins listed above.
I have only 10 plugins installed. They are:
404page – your smart custom 404 error page
Accessibility by UserWay
All-in-One WP Migration
Code Embed
Disable XML-RPC Pingback
Divi Accessibility
Google XML Sitemaps
Page Specific Menu Items
Smash Balloon Instagram Feed
Wordfence Security

Has anyone seen any better ideas for dealing with this?

I tried to do this

If anyone else hits this I was able to fix by editing the wp_config.php and changing the line:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, true);

to:

define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);

I am not finding that in my wp-config.php

I have only 10 plugins installed. They are…

My best suggestion would be to disable them all, and enable one by one till you find the culprit. The plugins seem to be problem, not the WP core. (Possibly also related to newer versions of php running more stringent checks for errors, who knows…)

Thanks
I had tried that with no luck.
In my effort to at least stop the error messages from messing with my public pages one of the code edits caused an error message that pointed at my installed theme – Elegant Themes – Divi.
Then I added
define(‘FS_METHOD’, ‘direct’);
to my wp-config.php file. That seems to be a good temporary solution so public pages do not show php error messages.
I am posting this now since it may be useful to others but realize that my problem has nothing to do with the All In One Event Calendar.

For me, I was able to keep my All-in-One Calendar by making some modifiecations. (I had even tried using the paid “The Events Calendar Pro” plugin instead but found that that soultion was even worste for me.) Anyway, the modifications I made to AiO has reduced the CPU usage enough to keep the service from stopping. Oh, and if you find that whatever you do with the AiO Calendar is still too much for the CPU usage, then look into their “Pro” version of the Calendar plugin (which is hosted on Time.ly’s server/cloud and not your service).

What I recommend doing, aside from turning off all the plugins and gradually restarting them, is to use the following plugins:
– Disk Usage Sunburst – this plugin will show you the size of each function within your WordPress set up. (I found that one of the biggest plugins was SEO by Yoast. So I swapped that out with RankMath SEO)
– Query Monitor – This is a great plugin. It shows you (within the black Admin bar on top of each page) how much CPU pull and resources that particular page is pulling. This way you can optimize the page further.

One of the things I had found after adding Query Monitor was that my home the AiO Calendar “agenda” view was producing too many background items activity. (If you clicked the item and it expanded the full content, then that can be a big issue. I used a CSS code to “display:none” of that. I then went to my main “Caledar” page and replaced the Agenda view wit a far more simplier view, one without background content.

So, in short, really “optimize” your site so that as few plugins are being utilized. And consider using a Calendar where the database and activity is hosted away from your own web server.