I’ve discussed plugin issues before with WordPress, but it looks like this really needs to be pounded in a little more (not to mention I learned something today).
WP-Admin failed for several people today while I was hanging out on the WordPress forums. I originally thought it was a Caching issue with one person and a plugin issue with another. Moral of the story, weird issues: rename the plugins folder first.
Today, it seemed to be the ALink plugin failing for both people. One got a 404 (file not found) and 403 (Forbidden) while another got: “Premature end of script headers: index.php”. Odd - never heard of a 404 with this error.
ANYWHO - perhaps the first thing that should be in anyone’s WP toolbox when they’re trying to problem solve is Firebug. That little booger of a plugin has helped me several times over the last few months both supporting internal and external issues between many sites. I also use Web Developer since it allows me to drill down to very specific things to troubleshoot.
Plugins are getting more and more reliant upon a home site. They may check for updates every time you log into your Admin section, they may check search engines for a digital finger print, they may even automagically update whenever you login(I see this more as a security issue though). My main point is, the more plugins that you install in your WP install, the more likely you are to have problems later on. If you blindly install several plugins, you’re asking for problems. If you take your time, select a few then look at the code of said plugins (which I always do), you’ll see weird things from time to time. I’ve personally seen advertisements (SEO text) inputted via plugins, I’ve seen code to attempt to add Google Adsense without your permission, I’ve even seen some nasty stuff that puts in a web based telnet session script with a password (otherwise known as a backdoor).
Moral of the story: Be careful what you install, where you get it from and watch what it contains before installing. After that, if you have weird issues all the sudden, rename the plugins folder to see what happens.
Oh - last thing. If you ask for help on any public forum and you scream about how no one is helping you, you’ll be ignored further. I don’t even bother with impatient people.
