So this morning I was seated in front of my computer as usual, doing stuff like checking my emails, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I’m Mr. Predictable. It has become second nature for me to check my blogs on a daily basis as well, looking at my stats, comments if any, and so on. And hmmm, it’s been some time since I explored some new WordPress themes, so away I go. Ah, here’s one that looks interesting—I preview it but the preview doesn’t show (I should have smelled something fishy). But since the theme looks quite enticing I decide to let WordPress download and install it into my blog. Then I activate it, and Boom! my blog’s disappeared! In its place was this ominous and cryptic error message:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘)’, expecting ‘(‘ in /home/username/public_html/blog/wp-content/themes/producer/functions.php on line 9
That could have been written in Klingon or Romulan, I couldn’t care less. But my blog just vanished and the page was all white—just like my face. I tried refreshing the page—no luck. I tried logging in to access my admin panel—no luck, just that same damn message appearing, as if to spite me for activating the theme. It was like an enemy torpedo had blown up my blog ship.
Fortunately, I calmed down soon enough. Took some deep breaths, walked around, pondered…out of desperation I check the WordPress support forums. I look for functions.php (what the heck is this?) but there are hundreds and hundreds of threads. Better to post a new thread myself, and so I did. I started to get anxious again and paced around—can you imagine the distress arising within me? My patience was rewarded soon enough (around 15 minutes) when a Clayton James from New York replied and gave me the simple solution which I’m going to share here (thanks again, Clayton!)
So what do you do when a newly installed theme thrashes your WordPress blog? Here’s the answer:
- Use an FTP program and navigate to your WordPress theme directory. Locate the rogue theme folder and delete it. Don’t even think about it, just blow it to kingdom come!
- Open your browser, go to your blog site and refresh it. The default WordPress theme should show up again. Choose another installed theme if you want to. That’s all there is to it.
I learn something new everyday!
