[Resolved] Theme Spontaneously Stopped Working

[John]

Last time I was using my website it worked, its currently in maintenance mode, so when I went to login via wp-admin today, I see this and cannot proceed:

Fatal error: Can’t use function return value in write context in /home3/(cpanelname)/public_html/wp-content/themes/generatepress/inc/template-tags.php on line 479

Using addons and generate press together. I’ve never had a theme return errors when I havent actually touched anything so not sure what to do.

[Tom]

Hi John,

Very sorry about this – you can read more about this error here: http://generatepress.com/forums/topic/important-do-not-upgrade-to-1-3-05/

There’s instructions to fix there, or you can contact me directly at support@generatepress.com and I’ll personally fix it for you right away.

Let me know if you have any questions – sorry for the inconvenience!

[John]

Ah yea, I did a google search after I posted this thinking it may not be an isolated incident and figured it out. Incredibly easy fix.

I was thinking of using your theme on a blog I have that gets about 500k seo traffic per month atm. If this were to happen again and I didnt notice for a few days it could really screw things up.

Would you recommend using this: add_filter( ‘auto_update_theme’, ‘__return_false’ );

And then disabling and re-enabling it after checking here to see if no future upgrade was bricking sites.

Thanks Tom

[Tom]

I’ve started a beta tester program to prevent anything like this from happening again (http://generatepress.com/beta-tester-program/) – all future updates will be tested by the testers before being released.

Also, if you have a site with that much traffic, it’s definitely a good idea to turn off automatic plugin and theme updates, and test all updates on a staging installation before the production one.

I made the announcement when this happened on Facebook and through our newsletter specifically so people with automatic updates enabled would get a chance to take a look before noticing their site has been down for days – may be good to follow one of those accounts.

That being said, yesterday was a nightmare, and it is my #1 priority to never allow a botched update like that to go through again.

Let me know if you need any more info 🙂

[Author]

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