DMS randomly deletes sections

[bhmedia 3]

Okay, this is getting REALLY frustrating....

 

Using Chrome on a MBP to run DMS for the first time on a new client.

 

I'll work on the site, refresh, save publish and all is good. I come back to the site an hour later, day later, whatever...add a section, DMS refreshes and a random section is deleted. Sometimes the entire page is deleted, other times a random section. I'm then forced to go in and rebuild the entire page. 

 

This has happened 3-4 times now and it's getting aggravating. I do have a couple of plugins running, but this issue has occurred a few times with no plugins running. 

 

The site is http://www.sfxburbank.com but I have a coming soon page up right now. 

 

Any ideas? 

 

 

[greenfly 230]

Hello bhmedia

 

Could you go to your Visual Editor - Site Settings > advanced > enable debug and we will take a look at the debug information for you and see if anything immediate comes to light. 

[bhmedia 3]

Enabled debug for you. 

Thanks

[greenfly 230]

You can see the debug info here http://sfxburbank.com/?pldebug=1 

 

Your debug information shows two Server related issues. 

PHP Version
5.2

PHP Register Globals
Yes! Deprecated as of PHP 5.3 and removed in PHP 5.4

Please ask you host to upgrade your PHP version and make sure Register globals is removed from your server configuration. This is deprecated functionality and has been removed in more recent versions of PHP http://php.net/manual/en/security.globals.php 

[bhmedia 3]

Alright...I'll see if I can get it upgraded. Thanks!

[greenfly 230]

Please let us know how you get on and we can take another look for you afterwards if the issue persists. 

[bhmedia 3]

I've upgraded to 5.4.22 now and will see how this works. Hopefully the issue is resolved with a newer php version running. 

[bhmedia 3]

Ya, so it just did it again. This time it wiped out like 70% of my homepage, running with updated php. I refreshed to show changes and it all disappeared. 

 

I mean at this point, DMS is unusable to me. I can't keep creating every page 20x over. 

 

EDIT: Every refresh wipes something new out. Not the revslider just reverted back to the DMS default slides. I think it's actually worse now since the php upgrade. 

[greenfly 230]

Hello bhmedia

 

Could you try recording a video of this happening if you manage to recreate it - with the free tool Jing http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

 

Also if you can create a user account with admin privileges for your Wordpress site and send the Credentials to hello @ pagelines dot com along with a link to this topic - we will take a look for you. 

[bhmedia 3]

Recording a video would be kind of unfeasible. It's random, I make a change, refresh and everything is good. Make another change, refresh, half the page is gone. I'd have to record my entire day of web development and that's pretty ridiculous.

I'll create an admin account for you though and send that info over.

Thanks

[tsalstrand 8]

Any update?  I'm experiencing the same thing.

[Danny+ 1,327]

This could be related to your server i.e. a caching issue or you could be experiencing the saving issue that a number of users have been having.

 

Basically, what happens is that when you add custom CSS to the CSS/LESS editor or add text or configure options in a section, when you click publish, some servers don't seem to save the progress you have made.

The issue has been resolved and will be included in an upcoming patch. In the meantime you could try the following band aid which resolves the issue for users.

1. Add your custom CSS/LESS, scripts or configure your sections.

2. Once you have configured your settings or added your custom code, click on an area outside the editor or if you're configuring a section click on a different option field.

3. When you have done one of the above, this should trigger the saving progression icon next to the publish button.

4. Once the saving progression icon has completed, click the publish button and this should resolve your issue.

 

However, please be aware that this resolves users who're experiencing issues with saving their option changes or adding custom scripts or CSS.

 

If your sections are actually being removed upon click publish and refreshing then, this to me sounds server related or could be caused by a plugin.

Have you tried disabling all active plugins except for DMS Pro Tools and see if this resolves the issue ?

[tsalstrand 8]

Danny, That's definitely a good tip.  Thanks.  

 

Unfortunately, it doesn't fix the disappearing sections issue for me, as I've been employing your tip for a while now.

[James B 436]

Hi there, it looks like you're using version 1.1.3, try updating to 1.1.4 as there were some fixes in relation to sections saving.

 

Version 1.1.4

    - CORE - Properly place icon on PageLines menu item.
    - CORE - Only show update notifications where needed.
    - CORE - Added missing image to assets folder for RevSlider.
    - CORE - Trigger settings to save if user clicks edit in another section.
    - BUG - CSS was sometimes broken on a static homepage.
    - BUG - Tweaks to settings system. Fixes some issues when saving.
    - BUG - Fixed Watermark Section sharing options.
  

[bhmedia 3]

The issue has returned...

 

All I did was log in, change the color value of a CSS line and my entire home page wiped out. 

 

I followed the procedure...made the change...allowed it to save...performed a refresh...and poof.. 90% of my work gone. 

 

Soooo irritating! 

[greenfly 230]

Just looking into this now for you with hostgator - can you confirm if you have a reseller server of shared hosting? 

 

Host Gator confirm they do use Caching on their servers for some plans. 

 

They pointed me to the information displayed on their site explaining the specs and information on  this http://support.hostgator.com/articles/hosting-plans/server-specifications-specs 

[bhmedia 3]

Okay, they told me they don't. 

 

I'm on a reseller server. 

[greenfly 230]

They did say reseller servers are using caching and they provided the link to the doc. http://support.hostg...ications-specs 

 

Someone should have pointed this out to you especially if you specifically asked them 

[bhmedia 3]

I've spoke with at least 6 Host Gator reps now, they have all assured me that there is no website caching. 

 

The link you attached is related to the server specs. SSD Caching is hard drive caching for programs -- a lot of computer utilize this technology. This doesn't have anything to do with caching of websites. 

 

Has the Pagelines team been able to figure anything out here? There's a number of us on the forum who are experiencing the random delete issues, even after implementing the work around you described. The CSS code issue is also still present. 

 

It's all very frustrating especially when I have paying clients I'm trying to build sites for. 

[Danny+ 1,327]

The problem is none of our team can recreate your problem, I myself have tried on numerous different setups and I haven't encountered the issue once.

 

There are only a few ways for your sections to be disappearing, these are:

 

1. A plugin is causing a conflict (try disabling them all, except for DMS Pro Tools)

2. You have actually removed the sections yourself, this can happen when you add sections to the Header/Footer area, but don't want them on all your pages. The problem is the Header/Footer areas are global template areas, meaning anything added to these areas will be visible throughout your site. So if you remove them on one page, they will be removed on all pages.

3. You have a server configuration issue, can you enable PL debug mode again please.

[Rob Thomas+ 7]

I can confirm that this is happening, as well.

In addition to previous issues with this, one of my installs now randomly deletes sections on my homepage for no reason (e.g. when editing another section on that page). It seems to be the same two sections.

These are sections that were built months ago and out of nowhere have vanished on me more than once. I mention this because it happened again tonight when I was editing the site.

Since I'm on break, I'll try to find some time to screencast it for you.

[Danny+ 1,327]

If you could Rob screencasts of the issue would be awesome, as I have been keeping an eye on this and tried hundreds of configurations and not once have I encountered this issue.

 

The only conclusion I have come up with is (I already think you're aware of this and its probably not your issue) that you're adding your sections to the Header and Footer areas, these sections are global meaning that if you add a section to the Header lets say for example, the Masthead, configure it and then save it. If you were to go to a completely different template and then remove or edit that Masthead section that is in the Header template area, it removal or changes will be visible throughout your site.

 

Anything placed inside the Header/Footer template areas are global throughout your site. I have reported this to our tracker making our developers aware that users would like different header/footer areas on a per template basis.

 

[bhmedia 3]

Hey Danny...

 

I get what you're saying but I think it's something different than what you're describing. 

 

So what will happen sometimes is you start working on a page and everything is going fine. Then I'll add a section outside of the header and foot, changes save and then DMS refreshes like normal. However, when the page reloads, sections are completely deleted and a lot of times if say I was using a Call Out…it'll still be there but with default values (like the placeholder text you guys use). I'd say it was a caching thing (though there hasn't been any caching enabled anywhere) but it's not even reverting to a previous version of the site. It's all very random. 

 

Thanks for working so hard with us on this. 

[Mark & Phil 7]

bhmedia This is the same kind of thing we tried pointing out to Pagelines staff and they just brushed it off that "they can't replicate". We even provided steps on how we made it happen. http://forum.pagelines.com/topic/30466-dms-issue-cant-edit-on-multiple-computers/

 

In our case, we did notice that if we made new Page Templates and limited publishing to one user at a time, the issues didn't happen.

 

Also, making other folks discard their changes if the circle came up anything other than green and they were not the one to make changes at that time helped.

 

We're on WP Engine servers btw.

[Danny+ 1,327]

Mark & Phil

I tried your steps on different computers and browsers and I still was unable to recreate your issue. I made changes to a page, clicked publish and then moved upstairs to my girlfriends laptop, logged in and the changes were present. I then made some changes on gf laptop, clicked save and then went back downstairs to my machine, refreshed the page (not refreshing the page could cause your issue) and the changes were present.

 

I have tried literally hundreds of setups to try and recreate both the issue with your multiple computers issue as well as this disappearing sections issue. I have not been able to recreate either of them once.

I am unable to report a bug, that I can not provide recreation steps too, our developers will reply with how do we recreate it, if I reply I can't then will simply close the reported issue in our tracker.