Can’t Create WordPress Categories

You’ve created the blog, added categories, created posts and pages and everything was running just fine until one day, POOF! – the editor seemed to stall, and the “edit” button seemed to go into an infinite loop.

You may have found that you can’t edit categories in WordPress either. I tried that too. Tried to edit “uncategorized” into the new one I needed, but same deal. Didn’t matter if it was on the post edit screen or the create categories screen.

solution to follow …

Can’t update permalink

In a related issue, you may have found that you can’t edit permalinks either. The “Edit” button works, allowing editing of the url part of the post, but when you go to click the “OK” button, nothing happens and the button is unresponsive.

clicking the edit button works, but after editing, the OK button spins forever or does not respond at all

solution to follow …

This has been a frustrating experience for both myself and my client. It was he who brought it to my attention and even I could not get it to work. Googling the problem returned results that were 2 years old at the newest and solutions ranged from “edit the categories in the database”, to “insert a .htaccess file into your wp-admin folder”.

My first thought was The Solution Is In The Log Files!

The Solution

My log files showed repeated entries of PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted —- blah blah blah, showing various amounts of memory and various .php files and wordpress plugins.

The answer is quite simple actually:

Increase memory size!

Edit your .htaccess file located in the root of your domain structure to reflect something bigger than the default. My client’s site had a default memory limit of 32 Meg. I increased it to 40 Meg and suddenly could create categories.

insert this code in your .htaccess: php_value memory_limit 40M

The inability to edit permalinks was also corrected.

If you can’t create categories in wordpress or cant edit permalinks, first check your log files, and if you see memory errors, increase the memory limit.

I’ve been looking for a solution to this for awhile now.

I have a very popular natural health and weight loss website which publishes a monthly newsletter. Subscribers to that newsletter get my free report “How I Lost 300 Pounds – How To Lose 10 Pounds a Month, Every Month, Until You Reach Your Goal Weight”. Those who follow the directions in the report often go on to report that they’re getting the results and losing the weight while feeling much better. The free weight loss report is a way for me to offer some really great content in exchange for an email address.

I’m sure you might be in the same situation.

So, in giving them a place to download the material, on my download page, I also want to offer other reports to the general readership. In offering other reports of value, it’s a way to show them that by subscribing, the get the “big one”.

I wondered “how do I password protect part of a post or page?” but not the rest.

Apparently it can’t be done.

Until I found this plugin: Password – Partial Post Protection (which didn’t work out of the box as claimed I might add). On that page, half way down it is the link. It’s tucked in between a few other wordpress plugins but a little hard to see if you just scan over it.

What it does is add a little box above your publish section in the upper right hand corner of your write post page in your wordpress admin. It uses shortcodes as you see in the image and everything within the shortcodes becomes password protected.

Code Is Broken Though

It’s a single file and out of the box it wont work. In order for the form to submit the password back to the page for authentication, you have to press the submit button (obviously), but the <input> field for the submit button uses type=”button” which does not submit the form.

Line 67 has to be changed from <input type=”button” ……..> to <input type=”submit” …..>

Have a look at how it works:

The next section of this post is password protected!
(password is “test”)

And this part is now visible again:
And this part below the password protection is again available to readers without the password.

This first solution does not make use of the built in password protection feature of wordpress.

A Second Solution

Funny enough, after looking for a solution to this for hours, I happened to read over the sitemap of a page I had open in a tab in my browser and found another solution to this. I haven’t tried his show the intro to password protected posts wordpress plugin, but I’m running a few others from him.

This second solution makes use of the <-- more --> tag and actual wordpress post password protection.

Seems to me that the first solution using short codes is a bit easier.

So there you have it. If you want to know how to password protect part of a post or page in wordpress, these two plugins may do the trick for you as they have for me. Now, I can move forward and create the download page for my readers that hides the bonus report until the subscribe for the password.