There is nothing mysterious about this problem. It occurs when bp is not activated and you launch the home theme. The home theme’s functions.php runs it gets to the first bit of code that requires a bp global BP_PLUGIN_DIR and crashes.
Does bp live in /wp-content/plugins/buddypress? (not /mu-plugins)?
Have you activated bp sitewide?
Does it activate properly?
This error began cropping up initially way back when bp moved from /mu-plugins to /plugins. There were also errors like this when bp was not in the dir /buddypress and couldn’t activate properly.
This is not a bug. It’s a config/install issue.
@ Burt:
It might be. The site was running fine and out of nowhere, the problem began occuring. To answer your questions:
[Before the problem came up] –
Does bp live in /wp-content/plugins/buddypress? (not /mu-plugins)?
-> Yes. Absolutely. I’m aware that post RC1 BP got shirted to plugins directory. It was & is in /wp-content/plugins/buddypress folder.
Have you activated bp sitewide?
-> Yes. The plugin was active sitewide and everything was working fine.
Does it activate properly?
-> Yep. Users could perform all the activities.
I’m facing a strange problem. I’m running WPMU 2.7.1 (latest) and when I enter my admin credentials, I get logged in as a normal user. Therefore, I do not see ‘plugins’ section or ‘buddypress’ in the admin panel. Also, I’m unable to activate/deactivate themes.
To fix this. I’ve removed BP (Plugins and Themes) using FTP. But the problem still persists. No admin options for me! What’s going wrong now?
Update: My webhost suggested I should make an entry to the php.ini file and add open_basedir settings.
What am I supposed to do exactly?
If I were you I’d run not walk to the wpmu forums where they are expert at dealing with this kind of issue. Search first and don’t mention bp. Just describe your symptoms. You lost site admin status. https://mu.wordpress.org/forums/
I found something strange:
I logged on to my database and repaired & optmized BP/WPMU tables. I logged in again and voila – I’m into my wordpress ADMIN PANEL !
WOW!
Ok, now a quick question:
In order to fix the problem I had removed the BP (directory) and themes. The database is intact with all the data. Shall I install BP from the plugin browser or shall I manually upload directories using FTP?
If I install through plugin browser, will BP create new (thus duplicate) tables in database?
I don’t trust the auto upgrade thing in 2.7.1. It’s flaky when it comes to sitewide plugins like bp. Upload and activate away. No if bp detects it’s table exist it just goes happily along you won’t get duplicates.
Nice job with the fix. It probably was the wp users table that was hosed.
Hi Burt,
Yes, the site is up and running now. But, how can I prevent this problem from occuring in future?
It already happened twice and now I’m sure it’s got something to do with the database. Can there be a SQL script to fix such problem?
@thebigk, if your DB for one reason or another needs repair or optimization, the best way to do that is with a human eye and phpMyAdmin. This should rarely happen however, so you shouldn’t have problems going forward.
The suggested way of upgrading the core is to deactivate all plugins first before you press go. Otherwise those other plugins are trying to load even as WordPress hasn’t fully upgraded itself, which can cause conflicts if the tables or indexes change even slightly.
Thanks for response, John!
I remember that I had repaired & optimized the tables earlier when the issue popped up for the first time.
BP should have run fine but the error popped up again. I already have about 2800+ members and the number of tables in database is quite large.
Shall I regularly keep optimizing the tables to prevent this? Or anything else I should do?
I don’t think I’ve found a permanent fix to the problem yet.
Can anyone tell me how do I prevent this database related bug from occurring again?