Categories and Tags Disappear in WordPress Self Hosted

There was time when the Categories and Tags on a WordPress-based blog that I manage myself (self hosted) disappeared. The front page blog displays “error 404 – Not found”, then when I logged into the administration page and click on “Writing – Edit” my posts are still there, just all the categories and tags that I have assigned to the article disappeared.

Other symptoms; when I added new categoriy and tag with the same name as the missing ones, there will appear a message that the category I added already exists and I can not add that particular category or tag, although it seems does not exist on the list.

The cause to the problem is very simple (although seems to be not related), do not worry this has nothing to do with your WordPress installation and you don’t need to reinstall WordPress or to restore the copy of database – something that I repeatedly do when it happens. : (

The problem is in the /tmp directory on the hosting server I use. It seems unrelated, but it’s the true cause.

The fix:

  • If you have root access to the server, run the following command:
    df -h
    This command will display the status of free space on the server partition. Make sure / tmp 100% unused, and delete the files in it with this command:
    cd /tmp
     find . -exec rm {};
  • Or if you have access to Cpanel, there is a link called “Service Status” on the sidebar (left bottom). Click it and check the /tmp partition. If it’s full, contact technical support of the webhosting service you are using, and ask them to empty /tmp.

I have proved this myself and indeed the problem is because the /tmp partition is full.

Oh yes, the last symptom I see was that the problem is intermittent. It can happend and disappear sometimes, this proves that it’s not a WordPress installation or database problem.

Good luck.

Source: WordPress> Support »Categories and tags dissappeared

Update: Not all web webhosting Cpanel based service opens the feature to show this status. However you can still ask them to check it out for you and to order the evacuation of /tmp partition.

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