I have logged into my WordPress back-end after a long time to write some new posts. I haven’t written a blog post in a couple of weeks and because of that didn’t have to login to the dashboard. However, for some reason the dashboard and the entire back end lost its formatting, making it practically useless to do anything. The site itself was looking fine to the visitors and readers but seems to be broken for the admins and contributors. The pictures below are from the web, I’ve forgotten to take screenshots.
I tried a few things with the limited functionality still available. Like disabling some plugins, and widgets hoping that the formatting will be restored. It was all in vain. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any backups for the site either ( a good lesson to learn, I’ve since enabled backups) so my web host couldn’t help me either.
But Godaddy rep assisting me advised that some of the files may have been corrupted, and if we upgrade WP to the next version, I may be able to resolve my issue. As my luck would have it, Godaddy’s installers were acting up that day, and my upgrade process went into an infinite loop. They said I may have to try again after a day once their in-house issues were resolved. I was really annoyed as I wanted to write some posts before I forget about them.
Then, out of curiosity, I wanted to see if my mobile phone can help. I logged on as admin using my iPhone
, and luckily for me, the theme I was using, Fluida, was fully responsive. As soon as I logged in, it presented me with the full dashboard functionality with proper formatting. It must have been an issue with some desktop version files going awry. Instead of fiddling around with plugins and themes, I just chose the upgrade option for wordpress, and the built in auto-upgrade scripts did the rest. The site was upgraded to the latest version of wordpress, and the dashboard started working perfectly as before.
If any of you are facing similar issues, you may have some luck trying my way using your mobile phone, or even a tablet. If you don’t necessarily have an upgrade path, you can still try changing the themes and disabling plugins etc. The point is, you will have access to the tools to help you debug.
Hope this helps.