WordPress.org

raabsalom
(@raabsalom)

1 year, 7 months ago

I went to edit a blog post on my website, and found that most of the entries were gone from some of the bulleted lists I had made in that post. The lists are still intact when I view the actual published post for now, and the revision history doesn’t say those parts of the post have been deleted, but when I go to edit the post (with either the visual editor or the code editor), a big chunk of those lists is gone from what I see in the editor.

So now I can’t edit the post continuing from how I left it, because what the editor gives me to work with is somehow missing some of the content that exists in the most recently published version of the post.

The problem seems to have something to do with the Easy Footnotes plugin. Every list cutoff seems to start at the point where I had put a shortcode for a footnote. I don’t think every list containing a footnote is having this problem, though, and the problem doesn’t go away when I deactivate this plugin (or any other plugins).

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

Brennan Goewert
(@bgoewert)

1 year, 6 months ago

Hello @raabsalom!

Just following up from this ticket. #57523

It looks like in your original Fixing WordPress forum post, you were unable to get the Health Check plugin to work.

I couldn’t get that troubleshooting plugin to work (“We were unable to copy the plugin file required to enable the Troubleshooting Mode”),

If you are using a hosting provider to host WordPress, I would get in contact with them to see if they can help you with the above issue.

but I did try disabling all the plugins and switching themes, and the problem was still there.

Can you confirm what theme you switched to? Generally when troubleshooting issues like this, it’s is better to switch to a default WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty-Two or another default theme.

Every list cutoff seems to start at the point where I had put a shortcode for a footnote. I don’t think every list containing a footnote is having this problem, though,

Are you willing to provide an example from an affected list? Having a look at this may provide some more context as to why you may be having this problem.

and the problem doesn’t go away when I deactivate this plugin (or any other plugins).

Most post/page content is stored in the site database and, depending on the plugin, generally does not get removed and as a result can persist even when that plugin is deactivated or deleted.

Thread Starter raabsalom
(@raabsalom)

1 year, 5 months ago

@bgoewert

I don’t remember exactly which theme I switched to, but all the themes I have installed are “twenty” ones, so it would have been one of those.

When I look at a published blog post that I haven’t edited since before this problem started, a list containing an Easy Footnotes footnote continues normally after the footnote:

But when I look at that post in the editor, now the list ends where the footnote had been. The footnote and the rest of the list are gone:

Now I’m thinking it looks like maybe the problem has something to do with the new way WordPress handles lists, which I think was changed a few months ago.

Looking at the revision history of a blog post that I have edited since this problem started, I see the code has automatically changed to include things like <!– wp:list-item –> during the same edit where the part of a list after a footnote got automatically deleted.

I made a new test blog post to experiment with, and I couldn’t reproduce the truncated list problem there. Could that be because this new post had the new list formatting from the start, and the bug only happens when it’s converting from the old list formatting?

I went into the code editor to try to test that idea, but when I changed the list in the test post to the old formatting, it automatically changed it right back.

So I’m thinking on other posts where I haven’t saved an edit since before this problem started, the full list must be there in the database, but when you open it in the editor, it automatically updates the code for lists, which apparently conflicts with the footnote shortcodes somehow, and leads to some list content disappearing from the HTML that the editor is working with.

If something like that is what’s going on, then it really is a bug in WordPress, isn’t it? Or rather a bug in the editor… Should I report it as a Gutenberg bug?

It looks like any new lists I make will probably be safe from this bug, but I’d like to see if anyone can fix it so the editor can open those old posts with all the content intact, so I won’t have to try to fix all those posts manually before I can safely continue editing them.