My Advancing Web Years: Issues with Trading my WPMS Mansion for a Florida Condo

Tim Treadwell’s Old Florida Collection

I just got off a call with Tom Woodward on an unrelated matter, and mentioned in passing an issue I’ve been having after moving sites from my WordPress Multisite mansion into stand-alone installs. He likened it to my packing up and letting go of the big old house and trading it in for a condo in Florida. It would make a fun video, and I could play the old guy pretty convincingly these days 🙂

Anyway, the issue I am having besides the usual back aches and broken links of an empty web nester, is that for the four sites I have moved out from my WPMS setup, I can’t add plugins and themes from the repository for any of them. In fact, the option is not even there:

I tried cleaning out the wp_usermeta table and starting fresh given it seemed like a capabilities/permissions issue for the users, basically not giving them access to the WordPress Multisite Network Admin options. This would make sense given bavatuesdays was one of many sites within the setup on its own network, but even after cleaning out the wp_user and wp_usermeta tables and starting fresh, I can’t add plugins or themes through the dashboard (FTPing them work fine).I turned off blogs.dir and mu-plugins, deleted everything in wp-config.php referencing the mutlisite, deleted sunrise.php, cleaned-up .htaccess, disabled then re-activated all plugins, and after all that still no love. I understand this is kind of an obscure problem, but was hoping someone might have some ideas given I am stumped at this point. I can’t fully enjoy my advancing web years when all the appliances are not working correctly in the new condo.

Update: This will be its own post here shortly, but for now I just want to note it was an issue with the wp_user_roles value in wp_options, as Boone pinpointed it in the comments below. In fact, Tom, Boone, and Pat all pointed towards capability issues with user privileges, and I just didn’t realize that was also handled in wp-options. I can now add themes and plugins from the repository cause of some very awesome folks who still use the web for good 🙂 The plugin User Role Editor Boone linked to made it dead simple to add the privileges for adding themes, plugins, etc. back for specific users, but more on that on the coming post. 

This entry was posted in WordPress, wordpress multi-user and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

27 Responses to My Advancing Web Years: Issues with Trading my WPMS Mansion for a Florida Condo

  1. Boone Gorges says:

    Total guess: Check wp_usermeta to see if your capabilities key is wp_1_capabilities or wp_capabilities. wp_1_capabilities is a remnant of WPMU, and may not be properly understood by non-multisite WP. Something like the following:

    UPDATE wp_usermeta SET meta_key = 'wp_capabilities' WHERE meta_key = 'wp_1_capabilities'

    Another thing to try is creating a new admin user. If you can log in and install with a separate user, you could (and maybe should, for security reasons) downgrade your main account to an Editor.

  2. Pat says:

    I’d ponder uploading a plugin which does capabilities and seeing if you can turn on the ones you need?

    If one doesn’t exist I’ll code one up

  3. Tom says:

    I’ll take a look too if it’s not answered yet. DB link?

  4. Pingback: This WP User’s Capability Issues | bavatuesdays

  5. Pingback: The Ghost of bava | bavatuesdays

  6. Pingback: The Sisyphean Labor of Link Love | bavatuesdays

  7. Tom says:

    Only three years ago and it feels like forever.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.