I am typing this just to let you know that everyone makes mistakes and gets stuck. I logged in to this website and realized that several plug ins needed to be updated. No biggie. Standard procedure. I also noticed that WordPress needed to be updated from version 3.4 to version 3.5. Okie dokey. I can update that, too.
When I was finished, I hopped over to add a new post and my tool bar was gone. Very odd. If you do not have WordPress, the inner workings look just like a word document, with buttons for bolding and italicizing text, changing the font and font size and so on. But …. it was gone?! I couldn’t type. I couldn’t paste. I couldn’t do anything!
Your first response may be panic, but remember you can’t really kill a website that easily! I headed over to the WordPress.org forum and realized that for half the people out there the 3.5 version was wonky. Everyone had different problems and the site was trying to determine the source of the issues.
First step, I deleted each of my plug-ins to see if any of those recent updates were the problem. I don’t mean that I de-activated them; I completely uninstalled them (I kept a list so I would know what to put back). I checked after each, but the site did not return to normal.
Next, I uninstalled all the themes. The one I was using and a few extras that were sitting on the site. I switched to Twenty Ten, which is a default theme. That didn’t work either. Grrr….
Last step, I Googled my exact problem. I just typed in what was happening into the search bar … et voila! Solution! Some tech guru had the same problem and figured it out for me WITH step-by-step instructions. Gotta love that! In my case, I needed to revert to an earlier version of WordPress.
Moral of the Story: Don’t panic. There is always a solution. You cannot break WordPress. And, if you don’t have a blog or website for your business, GET ONE!!!