This is an olive oil tasting educational Greek site.
In the site, Taster users are publishing Answers to Samples published by Panel users.
Link to a page where the issue can be seen:
(You have to be logged-in as *paneluser1*) hidden link
I expected to see: two columns of numbers, like this: hidden link
Instead, I got: one column of numbers
The problem has appeared (once, as far as I know) only recently (site has been live for 3 years now), and searching for the culprit I have found the double values in the database. Please check wp_postmeta table where post_id is 6583. Compare with other post_ids to see the difference.
Please note the admin user *otgs* shown below, only works for the Duplicator site I have uploaded.
Thank you for contacting us and I'd be happy to assist.
I managed to successfully deploy the website's clone and see the issue with the post's repeated custom field values in the database.
( screenshot: hidden link )
But in order to investigate this, I'll need to know the full background to assess what may have caused this.
Have you used any plugin or custom script recently which can duplicate the post or it's meta data or perhaps used any import/export feature?
Was this specific post edited through any Toolset Form or can you re-call any action which would differentiate this post from the others?
If this has only happened once and for this specific post only, I'll recommend to remove the duplicated meta records for now and monitor if something like this happens again, to see if any pattern emerges.
Please let me know if you have any further information.
"Have you used any plugin or custom script recently which can duplicate the post or it's meta data or perhaps used any import/export feature?"
No, to all questions.
"Was this specific post edited through any Toolset Form or can you re-call any action which would differentiate this post from the others?"
Taster users are not given the ability to edit their posts (Answers). Maybe the specific user did something ...weird, but I do not know, I have to ask him.
"If this has only happened once and for this specific post only, I'll recommend to remove the duplicated meta records for now and monitor if something like this happens again, to see if any pattern emerges."
Yes, it happened only once AFAIK. I should have checked for other double entries in the database, but maybe you can have a quick look, as you are more proficient than me 😉
I hear your suggestion (to remove the duplicated meta records) and I believe is the best solution for now.
However I 'll ask for info the specific Taster user and will come back to you asap.
The user was not much of a help, so I eventually deleted the duplicated meta records from wp_postmeta table.
If and when it happens again, I 'll open a new ticket.
