[Resolved] Toolset Forms causing the visual editor to fail

[Author]

Posts

[donB]

I am trying to: Use the visual editor on the backend
Link to a page where the issue can be seen: Any post or page in the visual editor on the backend
I expected to see: The normal visual editor
Instead, I got: The dreaded white text on white screen, missing toolbar, inability to access Screen Options, etc.

I have already tried ALL of the obvious things - deactivated all plugins except Forms, switched themes (with and without all other plugins off) to Twenty Seventeen and a barebones starter theme created with Underscores), clered the browser cache, reloaded the TinyMCE scripts, added "define('CONCATENATE_SCRIPTS', false);" to wp_config.php - you name it. Nothing works except deactivating Forms; that fixes the problem immediately, no matter what other combination of things is active at the time.

A little history: I had been using Types, Views, and CRED on this site, but removed them several weeks ago to try some other approaches using Pods. I decided that I like Toolset better, so I removed Pods and all of the pages I had been testing it with, and reinstalled Types, Views and Forms (which I guess replaced CRED in the interim). Have been using Types and Views for several days no problem, but as soon as I activated Forms my issue began.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Christian Cox]

Hi, first let's confirm these basic troubleshooting steps aren't helping:
1. Delete the Forms plugin from your site. Download a clean copy of the plugin from https://toolset.com/account/downloads, and reinstall the plugin.
2. Clear your browser cache and cookies, then log in again and test with Forms active. Check the browser console for JavaScript errors, and include those in your next reply.
3. Turn on server logs to see if any backend errors are generated. If you're not familiar with server logs I can show you how to activate them temporarily. Go in your wp-config.php file and look for define(‘WP_DEBUG’, false);. Change it to:

define('WP_DEBUG', true);

Then add these lines, just before it says 'stop editing here':

ini_set('log_errors',TRUE);
ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL);
ini_set('error_log', dirname(__FILE__) . '/error_log.txt');

Activate Forms and reload the page in wp-admin where the problem occurs. If any server-side errors are generated, this will create an error_log.txt file in your site's root directory. Please send me its contents. Once that is done, you can revert the changes you made to wp-config.php and deactivate Forms. If you are unable to access wp-admin to deactivate Forms, use FTP to temporarily rename the plugin directory at wp-content/plugins/cred-frontend-editor

[donB]

Hi Christian, thanks for your help!

I probably should have mentioned in my first message that I had already tried most of these things with no luck. However I did go back and repeat all of the steps you outlined very carefully just in case I missed something - unfortunately, zilch. To summarize:

1. Did a full deactivate and delete of Forms; reinstalled using manual upload of the plugin from the download page.
2. Cleared browser cache and cookies, and the problem remains.
3. No JavaScript errors (current version of Chrome developer console); even tried another computer - same result.
4. Debug was already on, but I cleared the log, added the lines you asked for to wp-config.php, and reloaded everything several times. No new errors were generated.

This one definitely has me stumped, I really need to be able to use Forms, so I'm anxious to hear any other ideas you have.

Thanks again!

[Christian Cox]

May I log in to wp-admin and take a look? Private reply fields are enabled here. In the meantime, please verify with your hosting provider that the mbstring extension is active and PHP's eval function is enabled, as per the minimum requirements: https://toolset.com/toolset-requirements/

[Christian Cox]

I'm fairly certain the mbstring extension is not enabled. If you edit a post and scroll to the bottom of the screen, you can see an error message:

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function mb_convert_case() 

Not sure why this error isn't registered in your error logs, but I think once you fix this you'll be up and running.

[donB]

OK, i feel like a total idiot for 1) not verifying everything on the clearly stated requirements list and 2) never scrolling to the bottom of the screen where the error message was clearly visible! I learned a humbling lesson on this one - pay closer attention to the details and don't assume you know more than you do.

Sorry to take up your time on something so silly. Thanks for your help!