Not sure what happened there, went to check my stats tonight and my entire site was down. Logged into StatCounter and AdSense and both are reporting very small amounts of traffic for the last two days and a slightly reduced amount for 3 days leading up to that. None of that makes sense, the site should have been up or down, but yet it seems to have worked intermittently. In any case, this is the error I was getting for both the main site and even the admin login:
cannot redeclare sticky_class() (previously declared in /home/user/wordpress/wp-includes/post-template.php
The file in question was wp-includes\deprecated.php, which is not a file I would ever edit in my WordPress installation. I also had not edited the post-template.php file at any point. The only thing I had done recently was some house cleaning on other parts of the FTP and I did update my plugins, themes and WordPress installation about 2 weeks ago. Still, it had worked afterwards, I know I tested it. And based on when my traffic dropped this happened on it’s own about a week after I did all that.
So I am at a loss as to how I ended up in this situation, but here’s how I managed to get back online:
- Got the latest WordPress zip file
- Extracted the files
- Deleted the old wp-includes and wp-admin directories on my server
- Uploaded the new wp-includes and wp-admin directories
- Uploaded the new wp-content folder to my existing wp-content folder, overwriting existing files
- Uploaded all files from the root directory of the WordPress install into my root directory on the site
Of course, I did not know these steps off hand and had to consult with the WordPress Codex. You’ll notice I did not deactivate my plug-ins, I honestly wasn’t sure how I was supposed to complete that step without having access to my admin panel. But in the end the process worked and my site is now back online.
A seasoned Senior Solutions Architect with 18 years of experience in technology design and implementation. Renowned for innovative solutions and strategic insights, he excels in driving complex projects to success. Outside work, he is a passionate fisherman and fish keeper, specializing in planted tanks.