This thread is resolved. Here is a description of the problem and solution.
Problem: The "Published" count in the Pages dashboard shows about 2000 Pages that cannot be found on the site.
Solution: I have deleted the "ghost" post entries from the database manually.
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This topic contains 10 replies, has 3 voices.
Last updated by 6 years, 2 months ago.
Assisted by: Christian Cox.
I am trying to:
Clean some weird "ghost pages" generated during an import data process or form submission. They are more than 2,000 pages. They are not listed on the backend like regular pages.
These are cred autoforms probably from the plugin Toolset Cred. I found on a google search that many users have similar issues.
Link to a page where the issue can be seen: I provide a screenshot
I expected to see:
Only the normal wordpress pages that i´ve created and clean the ghost pages on my database (2000 pages).
Instead, I got:
Attached is a screenshot of Toolset > Post Forms
As you see it cannot be that the ScreenShot you share depicts Toolset Forms autogenerated in the thousands.
There is no such feature that could do that (Automatically generate Forms).
The ScreenShot you show is probably from Dashboard > Pages or Dashboard > Any Post Type, and there you have thousands of posts, that you did not add your self.
Is this correct?
Toolset Forms cannot add posts itself automatically either.
Someone needs to submit the Form to create a Post.
Given the titles of those posts it seems to me (also considering you mention an import) that you imported the Toolset Forms several times to Pages Post Type.
This is however not due to Toolset, it may be due to the import process.
There are no users reporting this issue, that I can find.
Can you link me to some?
It would be crucial to solve such bug fast.
For now, I suspect the import with (any) tool you used to migrate the site or import content generated those posts.
To delete them you can either display 100 posts a time in that list and click 20 times on delete, this should remove the posts in less than 20 minutes.
It's tedious though, and if you prefer, and know what posts you want to delete, we could do that in the database.
It's however safer, and faster, in the WordPress Admin.
Just list 100 (or more, depends on your server) posts a time, then check them all and move to trash, repeat in the trash to delete completely.
This is an OK workaround if this is a unique situation.
If not, if those posts keep coming, we need to know why this happens.
Since Forms cannot do that without explicit submit, we would need to know if it happens without any other plugin but Toolset and a Native WordPress theme as well.
If then the issue persist, we will need precise steps to either replicate this on a fresh install or on a copy of your site.
Please let me know the outcome, so we can then decide how to proceed.
Here are my findings:
- There are only 28 posts in the auto-draft state, as you can see in the screenshot post-status.png.
- There are only 28 posts with a post title "LIKE" Auto Draft, as you can see in the screenshot post-title.png.
- Some Auto Draft or CRED Auto Draft posts are expected, as these are used by CRED to prevent duplicate post submissions.
- There are 1987 Page posts with no post title, with post dates of Feb 7 2018, as you can see in ghosts.png.
- 1986 of the Pages with no title were published on Feb 7 2018 between 5:56pm and 6:01pm. This indicates an automated process like an import or a custom code snippet, because the publish date/times and post IDs are often sequential and always tightly spaced.
- Why these Pages do not appear in wp-admin is not obvious to me, but it's also not obvious to me why you think that these ghost pages are related to CRED Auto Drafts. I can't see any direct or indirect relationship between them. Can you explain in more detail how you came to this conclusion?
- Does your site migration date coincide with Feb 7 2018? Any other processes you can think of on that date?
