snadra

I just realized that I have not had this setting get rest a single time since I contacted Bluehost 7 weeks ago. So either it’s an incredible coincidence, WordPress implemented a fix in an update, or Bluehost fixed something after I talked to them. Interesting… I will report back if it gets reset.

I am also on the Shared Plus hosting plan with Bluehost. My checkbox hasn’t reset in a surprisingly long time. Will report back if it does.

@abcdiamond, I do not have either of the plugins you stated as being common across your sites, so I don’t think it has anything to do with those.

Mine is fine today, and I haven’t had to reset it in at least a couple weeks.

@karchetan, good idea. I’ll try to check daily and will report here when it happens again. Interested in seeing if it hits everyone on the same day!

Update on the Bluehost angle — I have tried to address this problem with Bluehost for the last couple of days. I spoke with two level-1 support folks via live chat, and neither even understood the problem I was describing. I finally was able to get escalated to a level-2 person and a case was opened. I got an email reply stating that Bluehost does not change WordPress/database settings. However, the reply also included a supposedly helpful link to a barely-related WordPress forum post about comments in general, so it makes me only 50% confident that the answer I got was even accurate. It is incredibly difficult to talk to anyone at Bluehost who knows what’s going on. ??

I’m on Bluehost, too. I will try to reach out to their support tomorrow to see if I can get anywhere. Wish me luck!

@kimwhite, your screenshot is an interesting lead, but I don’t have that screen in my account. ??

@bodhi, I’m using a custom theme I wrote almost 10 years ago. There’s an almost nonexistent chance that the bug is coming from the theme, since nobody else experiencing this bug is using my theme.

Thanks for sharing that new thread.. it’s one I hadn’t seen before, and I’m interested in the fact that all the posters there mention Bluehost! I will delve into that more for sure.

I did do a “check” on the database as a whole and on the wp_options table, and it showed no problems found.

I don’t have an exact date for how long this problem has been occurring for me, but it has been at least a year.

Still searching for things in common with other people having this issue… by chance are you all on Bluehost servers? Maybe they are doing something fishy with database backups.

Unfortunately, deactivating plugins is not a reasonable test because the setting re-sets randomly. Sometimes it’s after a few days, sometimes it’s after a few weeks. Because this bug isn’t easily reproducible, there is no way to know if deactivating a plugin actually worked or not.

In a separate post here I asked others experiencing the same problem to check their plugin lists against mine. The only one in common was Akismet Anti-Spam. I have discussed this with the (incredibly responsive) Akismet support folks and they have no solution to offer.

Also, my theme is completely home-grown, so it’s very unlikely that the issue is theme-related, since other people experiencing this aren’t using my theme.

One question comes to mind… My server is hosted by Bluehost. Are other people experiencing this problem also on Bluehost? Maybe they are doing something fishy with database backups?

t-p, so you think it’s likely that there is more than one different bug/issue causing the same WordPress setting to be randomly reset for multiple people?

Thiefhunter, I have not resolved this problem yet, and it is still an open issue.

Thanks, t-p. I found the database fields close_comments_for_old_posts and close_comments_days_old. I grepped for these fields in all of my plugins (and themes) and they aren’t in there anywhere. I also searched for wp_options in my plugins and it’s not in any of them either.

Hey t-p, any chance you can tell me where WordPress stores the setting itself? If you can give me a database field name or a file name, maybe I can grep my plugins and see if I can find anywhere referencing it.

barryemma, do you have any plugins in common with the ones I posted in my previous comment?