Shawn Hesketh answered 3 years ago
Shawn Hesketh
replied 3 years ago Is your most recent blog post titled, “Inauspicious start with Barclays”?
If so, I’m currently seeing that on the homepage, just below the headline, “Daily Dose Over the Fold.” Is that correct?
Yup, the Barclays bit is it. This morning’s post went through on all fronts even without dumping the cache. May it ever be thus. But it probably won’t be.
So now to areas that may be beyond the scope of WP101, but what the hell. I’ve never seen this problem dealt with in WP courses. Am I looking in the wrong places?
About a fortnight ago, I couldn’t access any of my websites for the better part of a day. Neither could my neighbors, using the same Altice server. Nor, in fact, could I access my webhost in London. I texted him and he insisted everything was fine at his end. (Should I believe him?) Then my son put me on his VPN (out of Texas, you’ll be happy to know) and my websites came in fine. But not my webhost. My friends at Town Hall, on a different server, also were able to access my websites but not my webhost. All the while, by the way, I had full WP admin access to my websites.
By the time the sun went down, everything, including the webhost, was accessible. With and without VPN. So I forgot about it. Oddly enough, though, Town Hall could not access my webhost till the next morning, even though I could, and even though it could access my websites.
Am I correct in assuming, first, that a website and the WP admin access to it are in fact different, discrete websites (URLs?) with some sort of links? APIs, perhaps (see below)? And, second, that every page of a website is in essence a discrete website?
That could explain why my posts were accessible to me and other local Altice broadband customers yesterday, but not my home page. But why would the access have been on and off? And why not for an entire website?
Late last night, on my tablet, which could not access the updated static page even though my mobile phone could, I found an error message in the WP admin site health area (which indicated good health) for Application Programming Interface. I can’t recall what I did (or if in fact I did anything), but the API error message disappeared and hasn’t returned. Yet. Could that have been the problem? Or is the problem with my webhost?
And would it be advisable to reactivate all the webhost’s caches I’ve deactivated?
I’d keep my fingers crossed, but it interferes with typing . . .
Shawn Hesketh
replied 3 years ago There is definitely something squirrelly going on with your site, and I would recommend you reach out to your web host to sort it out. It still sounds like there’s something wrong with the server-level caching, and only your web host will be able to troubleshoot that for you.
To your question, no, your website and WP admin area are not separate websites. They do have a different URL; in fact, every page on your site has its own URL. But your entire WordPress installation sits on one server at one web address. So that does not explain why you’re experiencing the issues with your homepage not including new posts when they’re published.
Finally, you mentioned an API error in your Site Health screen. It sounds like you may be referring to the REST API, which WordPress (and other applications) use to communicate with the server on which your site resides.
Even though WordPress reports this as a critical error, it actually doesn’t affect functionality of your website at all.
The good news is, this morning I published my update without even dumping the cache. No bad news. Yet.
Next time I have a problem I’ll get on my web host’s case. But, remember, he insisted nothing was wrong when something was wrong. That my website and the WP admin area aren’t separate websites also doesn’t explain the problem he insisted I didn’t have. Of course, I, my neighbors, and the town administration could have been hallucinating.
REST API is indeed what I was referring to. Even though WP reported the REST API error, the little green circle indicated the website was in perfect health. And when I looked again, the error message had disappeared. You say it doesn’t affect website functionality. So what does it do? And if it communicates with my server, couldn’t even a minor code glitch of a little digit or two in an unstable medium have caused my problems?
Shawn Hesketh
replied 3 years ago The REST API is used by the WordPress iOS application (as one example) to connect to your site. If you don’t use the WordPress app, you’ll likely never encounter an issue. Ideally, your web host should be able to resolve that error for you, but it sounds like you’ve had less than stellar support from your host.
For some inexplicable reason (to me, anyway), the finally updated static page I referred to in closing the previous question has reverted to the un-updated version on all four thoroughly cleansed browsers. I’m positive that when I accessed the updated version on a newly called-up Firefox, it was not in the WP-admin mode . . .