Call To Undefined Function Metadata_Exists After WordPress Upgrade

Written by Allen White on December 15, 2011. Posted in General, Web

IT Problem

As fellow wordpress users know, the latest version of wordpress, version 3.3 was released this week. So as per usual I set it away to upgrade automatically. After about 5 seconds it came back with this error.

Fatal error: require() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘/home/yourfolder/public_html/wp-includes/class-wp-editor.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php:/home/allenwhi/php’) in /home/myfoldername/public_html/wp-includes/general-template.php on line 1808

OK, I thought, lets just check the site is fine. So off I went to check my site, then i got this..

Call to undefined function metadata_exists() in /home/myfolder/public_html/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 552

EEEEEKKKK!.

Turns out a security plug-in had set my \wp-includes\ folder to read only.

IT Solution

So to fix the issue I did the following. In dreamweaver I went into remote view ( YOU MUST DO THIS )..

dreamweaver remote view

I then right click over the wp-includes folder and went to Set Permissions.

set file permission in dreamweaver

Then finally I set the folders permission to 755 which allow only the administrator to “write” changes.

set wp-includes to 755 permission

Ok so now I was back in the situation where I can upgrade my word press install. The next problem was that I could not do it automatically. So I then had to upgrade it manually. Read on..

Upgrade WordPress Manually

So first I downloaded wordpress 3.3 from here

I then extracted it to a temporary folder..

Then I took a FULL BACKUP of my website locally.

Then you need to copy the folders all files & folders – except the wp-content folder from a the download of WordPress. Again I repeat DO NOT UPLOAD THE FRESH WP-CONTENT.

Once all the files have uploaded you will need to go the URL below, replacing your site.

http://yoursite.com/wordpress/wp-admin/upgrade.php

You should then be able to upgrade successfully. Make sure you again now take a full backup of your site.

Tags: wordpress

Allen White

Allen is an IT Consultant and holds the following accreditations. MCSA, MCSE, MCTS, MCITP, CCA, CCSP, VCP 4,5, 6 and HP ASE, AIS - Network Infrastructure.