Help Needed! WordPress commenting isn’t working (WordPress database error Duplicate entry)

By Wesley Fryer On April 29, 2009 · · Add Comment

Ah, these are the moments I wish I had my own IT staff. If you’re a WordPress or mySQL guru perhaps you can help me!

I am running WordPress on my main blog (“Moving at the Speed of Creativity”) and the blog has stopped accepting comments for some reason, as of Monday night (April 27, 2009) around 8 pm CST. That’s when my last comment came in successfully. I can post new entries to the blog, but no new comments can be received. I’m running WP 2.7.1. I haven’t installed or updating the blog or plug-ins lately, so I don’t think the source is a recent change I’ve made. I tried disabling all plug-ins except Akismet, but the error persisted. I think the problem is in my mySQL database. 🙁

I checked my WordPress directory error_log file and this is the last entry. It is a “WordPress database error Duplicate entry” message:

The other strange symptom is that in my WordPress dashboard, it shows that I don’t have any comments on my blog, even though there are almost 7000 approved.

The comments are still there, when I click the “comments” sidebar link they show up. Something is messed up with the auto-incrementing and I think it needs to be reset in mySQL. I’ve never done that, however.

I did a full mySQL database backup using phpMyAdmin. I considered reinstalling WordPress 2.7.1, but since this appears to be a mySQL problem I don’t think that would help. I haven’t (to date) done a good job monitoring and managing my error and access logs, and I’ve got some other issues and problems that it looks like I need to fix. (Some big ones with PodPress.) Overall I know I need to clean up my mySQL database, but never having done that before I am not sure where to begin. At least I have a new backup, I know that’s always a good idea…

Do you have any suggestions or tips for me that could help? Since my blog isn’t accepting comments (isn’t that ironic) I’ve cross-posted this to our Learning Signs blog (where commenting is working) or you can Tweet me an idea or link as an @reply or direct message.

Many, many thanks. Yuk. I really don’t like technical glitches like this which can often consume LARGE amounts of troubleshooting time.

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wordpress, error, mysql, comment, duplicate