Yoast crashes site

How unfortunate @richards1052! Did you see any specific errors?

Here’s the log my host sent me:

there is one line from the log

"[28-Apr-2020 07:35:14 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Undefined constant 'DB_CHARSET' in /var/www/richardsilverstein.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/initializers/database-setup.php:110
Stack trace:
#0 /var/www/richardsilverstein.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/initializers/database-setup.php(52): Yoast\WP\SEO\Initializers\Database_Setup->get_connection_string()
#1 /var/www/richardsilverstein.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/loader.php(145): Yoast\WP\SEO\Initializers\Database_Setup->initialize()
#2 /var/www/richardsilverstein.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/loader.php(111): Yoast\WP\SEO\Loader->load_initializers()
#3 /var/www/richardsilverstein.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/main.php(81): Yoast\WP\SEO\Loader->load()
#4 /var/www/richardsilverstein.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/functions.php(26): Yoast\WP\SEO\Main->load()
#5 /var/www/richardsilverstein.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/wp-seo-main.php(346): Y in /var/www/richardsilverstein.com/public_html/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-seo/src/initializers/database-setup.php on line 110"

I checked your wp-config.php, did you edit it or plugin changed it?

these two lines were commented, I uncommented, I put yoast seo plugin back, can you activate it and check again?

define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8');
define('DB_COLLATE', 'utf8_unicode_ci');

He thinks there was some sort of conflict with another plugin WP Optimize.

I reactivated Yoast and it seems to be working fine. But the conflict caused some weird problems rendering characters including Hebrew letters. We’re still trying to sort that through.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by richards1052.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 11 months ago by tobifjellner (Tor-Bjorn “Tobi” Fjellner).

Same here. My site (front and backend/admin) crashed immediately as soon as I updated to Yoast 14.0 just now. Had to use recovery mode and rollback to Yoast 13.5 to make site work again.

@chuckie Dreyfus: My host thinks there may be a conflict with WP Optimize, though that’s not confirmed. Do you have it installed? If not, then we know that’s not the culprit.

@joostdevalk Here’s another message from my host. It looks like something got corrupted related to character conversion when the Yoast update happened:

“I will proceed with a database restoration because the database has been corrupted by some text conversion and there’s no way to convert back (Hebrew characters are stored as “?” in the database: Tikun Olam ????? ???? is 54696B756E204F6C616D20203F3F3F3F3F203F3F3F3F)”

@richards1052 Can you please confirm whether the issue still occurs when you are using the most recent Yoast v14.0.4? You can learn more about updating here: https://kb.yoast.com/kb/how-can-i-update-my-free-plugin/
?
?If you update to the most current version of Yoast SEO, does this resolve the issue?

I have autoupdates and it looks like the plugin was updated to 14.0.4. I haven’t had any further issues since I deactivated version 14,0 and reactivated it. Can you tell me whether there was a bug in version 14.0?

I’m curious to know whether there was a conflict with WP Optimize or whether it was something in the Yoast plugin code. Also curious whether the character corruption was caused by Yoast or happened in some other fashion.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by richards1052.

Here is what my host wrote to me about the issue:

The php error was in Yoast, because of a missing constant, which shouldn’t have been mandatory, however something happened after that corrupted the character set of the tables.

@richards1052 Yes, unfortunately there were several bugs in the initial release of Yoast SEO 14.0 which were addressed in several subsequent patch releases. You can view the bugs that were addressed in the patch releases in the changelog here.

We are going ahead and marking this issue as resolved due to inactivity. If you require any further assistance please create a new issue.

Well it happened to me today, it totally crashed the site and here is the crazy thing…. on the GoDaddy server in file manager the files were disappearing before my eyes, one moment the content files were full and the next the contents were all gone. I got onto GD thinking it was a hosting problem and we spent nearly an hour trying to diagnose the problem together which became impossible as the files vanished. The only thing we could see was the MySQL DB. Running the WP Debug we found the log file stating the Yoast all in one SEO was having a major conflict. There was literally nothing left in the site. The Recovery Mode kicked in but to no avail.

I have a daily back up account so I have just tried installing a backup from a week ago and now I have issues with the Jquery, the back up didnt work well at all, now left with a mess.

Just a guess. But are you using the native WP auto updater by chance (the one you enable on the plugin list page)? I’ve found that the auto updater is failing to update the Yoast plugin and then it disappears all the plugin files from my directory.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by richards1052.