Update to 3.5.5 - Triggered a fatal error

[man-O-media]

So I just tried to automatically update to 3.5.5 and the update stoped.
After about 5 minutes I refreshed the page.
After checking Plugins, I see hat s2 is not active.
When I tried to activate I got this error:

Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error.

Warning: include_once(/nfs/new/hene/our_wp/wp-content/plugins/s2member/includes/syscon.inc.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /nfs/new/hene/our_wp/wp-content/plugins/s2member/s2member.php on line 74

I am looking at more info but wanted to say this now.

Daine

[man-O-media]

OK, so I did the manual update thing and all seems to be well.

I presume this error is because of memory limits on my server? This would not shock me as the web host sucks!
We will be moving in a few months but as the site is not live yet there is no reason to loose the money already paid and the organization is short on funds.


BTW, Jason et-al, I saved the old s2member folder if there is any interest or questions

Daine

[man-O-media]

And another BTW...

Why is "Deactivation Safeguards" not on by default?
I had it on which I suspect was "Helpful". Why would you not want it on?

DP

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for reporting this important issue.

This looks like a corrupted installation of s2Member. From the error you pasted in, it looks like the syscon.inc.php file was missing from your /s2member/ directory. Perhaps an FTP mishap. Particularly since the error went away after you updated. If anyone else has this problem though, please let us know about it. That being said, as of right now, this appears to be an isolated incident.

[Jason Caldwell]

Thanks for the excellent question.

Why is "Deactivation Safeguards" not on by default?
I had it on which I suspect was "Helpful". Why would you not want it on?

Yea, there is an ongoing debate over this topic. All of our software is designed this way, because we feel that WP plugin Activation/Deactivation is the same as Installing/Uninstalling software on your PC.

More importantly: since remaining/unused options left in the WordPress database can cause problems for a site ( i.e. optimization issues ), we feel it's important for s2Member to delete itself entirely upon Deactivation; at least by default. Only after a site owner has configured the General Options, and turned these Deactivation Safeguards (on), would s2Member preserve itself on that site.

Experimentation: This is part of the debate as well. For instance, if you were just trying s2Member out on your site ( but then quickly decide to remove it for whatever reason ), you may end up with several options in your database that are never going to be used again, along with s2Member Roles, etc, etc. So by default, if you remove the plugin, without having configured it first, s2Member cleans up after itself.

If however, you HAVE configured it, and you enabled the Deactivation Safeguards, this is NOT an issue. So, from a support standpoint, this works both for us, and against us. Thus, a topic of debate. We realize there are some ways in which this can be improved though, and we're planning to do just that. In the mean time, we're always open to ideas. One thing we'll probably start with is moving this panel up higher in the General Options panel so it's easier to spot right from the start. Ideally though, we'd like to create something that is more intuitive than what exists now.

[man-O-media]

I had a look and indeed, many files are missing from that folder. I only have "codes.inc.php" and "s2member-min.js".

Anyway, a very reasonable, not unexpected answer as I too believe a program which is removed should not leave flotsam like so many Windows programs do

That said, I fall on the side of removal uninstalls everything, deactivation turns off all interaction.

• I would add a user question during automatic installation and during automatic update... Do you want to turn on "Deactivation Safeguards"?
• I would be less concerned about folks who manually do the initial install and updates as they are more likely to be savey users.
That said,
• I would put a separate "Important" readme in all three main folders explaining that setting and what all three folders do.
• Putting the setting at the top of the settings list makes sense but
• Not knowing the plugin rules, could you put two deactivate choices? [ Settings | Deactivate | Deactivate(safe) | Edit ] - on the main plugin page where (safe) would first turn on safeguards?
  Or perhaps in this case (safe) would write everything off into a separate backup database which could be later automatically deleted by reactivate or removal?

Just another 2 cents thrown into the pot... Daine

[Jason Caldwell]

Thank you for those great suggestions.
~ I'll see what we can do!