I recently upgraded to WordPress 2.2, a recommended security upgrade for all bloggers. Everything went fine on installation (and database upgrade) as per official upgrade instructions. And then a wordpress bug strikes my post editor! I tried to figure out the problem and realized it was not a bug after all…
Is it a wordpress bug?
In my post editor screen, when I switched from “visual” to “code”, all formatting buttons disappeared (even the hidden formatting buttons) and I could not switch back to Visual editor. Things were fine after “save and continue editing” the post, just to recur again on switching to “Code” view. Sometimes Firefox acts funny, but the problem was reproducible on IE7 too.
Seeking wordpress support
I shouted out on WordPress Trac and WordPress support forums about the issue, but no one else seemed to be affected. Some advised the standard “clear cache and restart browser”, others advised other complex php code editing which was too tricky to do (and understand and risk!). None seemed to help.
Fixing WordPress Bugs
It seemed to affect only me so I decided to recheck the wordpress installation and database (which was without any problems!). I used my trusted Filezilla FTP software to check out the files and folders.
First I checked the number of all files and the total files on server correctly matched the original WordPress number. So all the WP files had been installed. Great. Then I carefully proceeded to check the total file sizes of these files for every folder and one folder size was not matching.
One javascript file deep inside wp-includes showed that the file was installed, but its size was zero. I simply overwrite the file from the original, and the post editor was back to normal. I really don’t know why this should have happened at all, but the file installed as an empty file (maybe you can comment why).
WordPress Lesson Learnt
This incident highlights the fact that the problem could be specific to your installation. Double check your installation, if you feel the problem is specific to you. After so many upgrades, This is the first time I needed to recheck my wordpress installation files one by one for size, even after the total number of files matched. But now I know that if an unusual wordpress bug strikes, the problem could have been during FTP. I am glad I tried this out.
Yet if you cannot figure out the problem, seek wordpress support from the community. Always back up your blog. You never know… its your blog, take care of it.