Further to my earlier update, for further clarification, I requested assistance from my webhost provider to intall the prettylink plugin.
They were able to install it, however resulted in another problem which was resolved as explained above.
Thank you again.
My host provider indicated that the issue was related to the plugin “WP OnlyWire Auto Poster”. They had disabled it and now it works fine. They also indicated that this plugin may not work well with the latest release of wordpress.
