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Bug #22281

closed

white screen with an error message

Added by Marilyn Weber about 1 month ago. Updated about 1 month ago.

Status:
Resolved
Priority name:
Normal
Assignee:
-
Category name:
-
Target version:
Not tracked
Start date:
2025-03-10
Due date:
% Done:

0%

Estimated time:
Deployment actions:

Description

Jeff Allred reports:
When i navigate to the site for the course I'm teaching, I get a white screen with an error message that reads:
---
There has been a critical error on this website. Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.

Most of my sites work, but I did notice that a number of prior sites on the same topic have the same error. So clearly there's something broken that is common to that handful of sites but not to my other sites.

I hope this helps: LMK if you need more detail.

https://engl702spr25.commons.gc.cuny.edu/wp-admin/

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 #1

Updated by Boone Gorges about 1 month ago

  • Status changed from New to Resolved
  • Target version set to Not tracked

The fatal was being thrown by the threewp-broadcast plugin, which references the MULTISITE constant without first checking for its existence. This triggers a fatal error in PHP 8+. I fixed this in the plugin itself soon after our PHP 8 migration, but the plugin has since been updated, overwriting my change.

We had the following line in our cac-env-config.php file:

//define( 'MULSITITE', true );

With great fear in my heart, I uncommented it. It appears that the site is continuing to work properly (multisite, mapped domains, etc). But I don't know why it was commented out in the first place, and it's possible that there will be some unintended consequences. I'm copying Ray and Jeremy here so that they're aware.

Marilyn, the site should be accessible now.

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 #2

Updated by Boone Gorges about 1 month ago

  • Status changed from Resolved to New

Reopening. Setting the 'MULTISITE' constant appears to have broken many things. See #22284.

I've rolled back the change and will see if there's some sort of workaround I can use for threewp-broadcast.

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 #3

Updated by Boone Gorges about 1 month ago

I'm remembering now that we don't have MULTISITE because we're a legacy WPMu installation. This is related to the use of the wp_1_ prefix for the primary site.

The plugin is bootstrapped in a way that makes it impossible to define the constant conditionally, just in time to catch the fatal error. As such, I'm going to have to apply the hotfix again.

I've opened a support issue with the plugin author: https://wordpress.org/support/topic/unchecked-reference-to-multisite-in-framework-throws-fatals-in-php-8/#new-topic-0

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 #4

Updated by Boone Gorges about 1 month ago

  • Status changed from New to Resolved
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 #5

Updated by Raymond Hoh about 1 month ago

I'm remembering now that we don't have MULTISITE because we're a legacy WPMu installation. This is related to the use of the wp_1_ prefix for the primary site.

Yes, we do have an older ticket about the MULTISITE constant here - #16255.

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