Scott Cramer wrote this.

This post is for WordPress admins who find their sites suddenly not displaying right after working with the K2 theme sidebar manager.

Configuration:
As of this writing, I am using WordPress 2.3.3 with release 4 of the K2 theme. I have the following active plugins: Akismet 2.1.3, Gravatars2 2.7.0, Gravatars2 WP-Cron 1.1, Subscribe To Comments 2.1.2, WordPress Database Backup 1.7.

Background:
I was configuring the K2 Sidebar Manager with the modules I wanted displayed and the order in which I wanted them displayed. I was working with three columns and also had one custom “Text, HTML, and PHP” module that I was using for Google Adwords. As I made changes, I was flipping over to another browser tab to take a look at my site. I think I had just removed a sidebar module and changed the order of existing modules - to tell the truth, I don’t remember the last change made. However, the site stopped displaying correctly. In Firefox you could see the top header and the three column format and the text on the page. The page background behind the text had disappeared displaying the site’s black color background throughout everything. I run a three column format with the posts in column 1, site navigation modules in column 2, and Google Adwords in column 3. Everything but the site search had disappeared.

What I tried that failed (not necessarily in this order):

• Going back to the K2 sidebar manager and adding and removing modules to reflect some kind of change in the page.
• Changing from 3 to 2 columns and back again. It didn’t work either way.
• Under K2 Options, deactivating the K2 sidebar manager. It worked without it! When I activated it again, it didn’t work anymore.
• Changing themes to my previous non-K2 theme. The site worked with the old theme! When I changed back to K2, it didn’t work anymore.
• Cleared all cache, cookies (pretty much everything) in the Firefox browser. Nope.
• Changed to Internet Explorer. Same problems except the interpretation of the CSS left me with the white page background so it looked better but the sidebar manager modules were still not working.

The fix:
Looking at the database tables for WordPress, under the table “wp-options” there is a record with an “option_name” of “k2sbm_modules_active”. When you look at the MEMO field under “option_value” this is where all of the K2 sidebar manager settings are stored. Mine was fubar’d somehow. I have several WordPress blogs that I  administrate. I was initially leery of just deleting the field so I copied the contents from the field of a newly installed WordPress with K2. This fixed the site. So, afterwards - now that I was comfortable I could fix things - I deleted the contents of the field. This worked fine. Afterwards I went back into my K2 sidebar manager and set everything back up the way I wanted. Everything worked fine.

What to do in the future:
There is a  “restore” and “backup” button at the top of the K2 sidebar manager. Once you have made changes in your sidebar manager, click the “backup” button. This will save a data file to your computer with - guess what? - the value of the “k2sbm_modules_active” field. To test, I saved my setup, went into the database and deleted the value manually, and then restored. Everything worked great.

Hope this helps somebody out! Leave me a comment if you find it helpful.

My brother scooped me on this one… But I’ve got the rest of the story!

As he posted, we received the following support e-mail:

“Well it had to happen sOMETIME I THINK I ScrewED UP MY LAP TOP I Spilled glue on the left sIDE OF MY KEY BOARD NOW i get indicriminate letter flucuation’s UPPER AND LOWer casE Words IF THIS contin ues MY CUStomers Will thin i have a sEVERE CASe of a. d.d. this IS not going to wORK FOR ME IF THIS connot be deglued i wILL NEED A NEW L T”

And now the rest of the story…

We both thought it was a joke but found out the next morning that it was true. And the best part?

The user spilled the glue while attaching a lucky penny to his laptop.

100% true.

Last December I lost one of those small USB flash drives. I couldn’t find it *anywhere* and figured I left it onsite at a job and someone took it.

This weekend I was sitting inside talking to my girlfriend. She had a few files that she wanted to move off her computer but she didn’t want to waste a CD to do it. I told her if I hadn’t lost it she could use my USB flash drive and I explained what it was. She told me to hold on and walked outside. When she came back in again, she handed me a small grey piece of plastic.

It was the USB flash drive I’d lost in December! I pulled off the cover and it had a little dried mud just inside but otherwise looked fine. I plugged it into my laptop and everything was still there and worked great.

Turns out she found it the day before when we were doing some landscaping. It was in a pot at the front of the house that had been sitting in need of transplanting. She saw it and didn’t know what it was so just left it sit while we were working and then forgot about it.

The best I can figure is that in December I was coming up to the house and took my keys out of the same pocket where I put the USB flash drive and it fell on the ground. After this, either someone else walking up to the house picked it up and threw it in the pot or when I was shoveling snow, I picked it up in a shovel-full and somehow landed it in the pot.

In any case, it sat in that pot for almost 7 months through the rest of winter, spring, and part of summer - surviving freezing cold, snow, rain, and heat!

PNY technologies, Attache brand, 512 meg USB flash drive.

No brainer. Buy one.

Just put it on your keychain or something so you don’t lose it!

Let’s just say this… I do *NOT* plan to move to the next Microsoft operating system. Come hell or high water, I will figure out another way. I’m not mister anti-Microsoft at all costs but the last move I had to make was just downright painful - Windows XP on my new laptop coming from Windows 2000 on my last laptop. I mean, really, my laptop freak’n rocks - it’s a Sony VAIO VGN-A600P with a 17″ widescreen truebrite screen. Geeky techie techie, but some of you will salivate reading that. However, after uninstalling all the CRAP that comes preinstalled and trying to get XP configured, well, let’s just say, GRRRRRR. I still have some problems. I should just reinstall *everything* but I don’t enjoy spending a considerable chunk of my week reconfiguring my workstation and not getting any work done. I work for myself so I’m not taking any money out of “the man’s” pocket. It directly affects my bottom line.

Anyhow… Here’s a press release I was jazzed about. I’m sure they won’t mind me copying it here. It’s free press, after all.

—begin free press for somebody else—

ST. PAUL, Minn., and SAN DIEGO, February 8, 2006 - CodeWeavers, Inc., the leading Windows-to-Linux software developer, and Linspire, Inc., maker of the easy-to-use desktop Linux operating system, today announced the release of CrossOver Office 5.0 for Linspire. Linspire users who purchase CrossOver Office can run dozens of Windows applications, including Microsoft Office 2003, Adobe Photoshop and Intuit’s Quicken and Quickbooks, natively from their Linspire desktop Linux operating system. For more information about CrossOver Office 5.0 for Linspire, visit www.linspire.com/crossover.

“Businesses tell us they want to switch to the desktop Linux operating system to reduce total cost of ownership or improve security, but it’s the thought of losing one or two software applications - like Quickbooks or Microsoft Project - that holds them back,” said Kevin Carmony, CEO of Linspire, Inc. “CrossOver Office is genius because it removes that hesitation from the equation. Yes, you can still use Quicken or Microsoft software on your Linspire machine, but you don’t have to overpay for a Windows operating system license to do it.”

CrossOver Office allows Linspire users to install popular Windows productivity applications and plugins in Linspire without needing a Microsoft operating system CD or license. CrossOver Office includes an easy-to-use, single-click interface, which makes installing Windows applications simple and fast. Once installed, the application will integrate directly with the Linspire environment - users just click the application icon or name to launch, exactly as they would in Windows. Any documents created using CrossOver Office applications may be opened and edited with other native Linux programs, such as OpenOffice.org or GIMP.

CrossOver Office has become the essential productivity utility for millions of Linux users around the world by supporting the seamless, dependable installation and operation of scores of top-name Windows applications natively within Linux. Microsoft Office, Outlook, Visio, and Internet Explorer, as well as Adobe’s Photoshop and Dreamweaver, Intuit’s Quicken and Quickbooks, and Lotus Notes, are just some of the many popular applications that can be used on Linux desktops via CrossOver Office.

“Linspire’s power and ease of use, combined with its easy retail availability, has puts it among the leaders in the fast growing Linux operating system category,” said Jeremy White, chief executive officer of CodeWeavers, Inc. “CrossOver Office for Linspire will make it even easier for potentially millions of Windows desktop users - enterprise and individual alike - to make the switch to Linux.”

—end free press for somebody else—

*SNIP* Okay, they don’t have to have me copy *everything*.

Photoshop… Dreamweaver… Hmm… that covers the most important stuff for me.

Programming Skills…

Argh.