Dreamhost Upgrades PHP Installations
5 Comments May 31, 2007 1753 Views
Yesterday, as I was installing and activating a new Wordpress plugin I suddenly got a “Fatal Error” message in my browser window. It was something like this:
Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 8388608 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 46080 bytes) in …
As soon as I saw that error message, I immediately tried to go back and deactivate the plugin. I tried to access any part of my Wordpress Dashboard but to no avail. I kept on getting the fatal error. The next thing I did was to manually delete the plugin folder from wp-content/plugins via FTP. After I deleted the whole plugin folder, I thought that evertything would be okay. When I refreshed my browser and tried opening my Wordpress Dashboard, I still got a fatal error but this time it was associated with a different plugin. I did the same thing with the first plugin and deleted the whole plugin folder. Still the same.
After that, I knew that the problem wasn’t with the Wordpress plugins. I thought it could be with my Wordpress installation. Something must’ve been corrupted or something. The next thing I could do was to re-install Wordpress. Before I proceeded with that, I sent a support ticket to Dreamhost. I stated the problem and copied the exact fatal error messages that I got. Then I went on and re-installed Wordpress because I didn’t want my blog to be inaccessible while waiting for the response from the support staff.
A few minutes later, when I was done re-installing Wordpress, I checked on my Gmail account and found a reply from one of Dreamhost’s support staff. It turns out that Dreamhost has been slowly upgrading the PHP installation for each web server and I wasn’t notified because they didn’t issue any warnings or notification to avoid confusion. I thought that re-installing Wordpress would solve the problem but actually, the issue was fixed after the support guy manually updated my PHP.
So what did I learn from this experience? The next time I get any type of errors on my blog that I’m sure aren’t caused by Wordpress, I’m gonna send a support ticket and wait for the reply before doing anything like re-installing my Wordpress installation. Hehe 
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Hello and welcome to JaypeeOnline! My name is Jaypee Habaradas and I'm the author of this blog that talks about the latest blogging news, WordPress theme and plugin reviews, technology, gadgets and tips & tricks.
Well, as long a you learned a good lesson from your recent installation woes.
The most important thing I’ve learned from doing software testing (as a career) that I’ve applied to other aspects of my life (lol): when troubleshooting an error/problem, don’t jump to conclusions. What seems like the root cause of an error could just be symptom. Point being, sit back and see the big picture before solving the problem.
Hehe. Yeah, at least your learned something. Similar thing does happen to me sometimes.
That was scary, but well, all’s well that ends well.
@fruityoaty - Yup, I did learn a good lesson from it. Bout jumping into conclusions, I guess that holds true in any situation. You never should jump into conclusions, you have to find out the cause before doing anything.
@Jam - Are you also with Dreamhost?
@Ade - Yeah, I was a bit worried at first. I thought my blog would get messed up and I was expecting the worse. Good thing nothing happened and everything was okay. Hehe