Lost administrator privileges and can’t find a fix

  • WordPress 3.5.1
  • Web Host: Windows Azure Cloud
  • Database Host: Cleardb
  • Web Server: IIS 7.5

I’ve built a custom child theme that runs on the Genesis Framework and it has multiple custom post types and metaboxes. Multiple plugins installed on the site as well.

Since yesterday my admin user can no longer perform the following tasks:

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  • Add new posts or pages (I can update existing ones). When I add a new page, I get a “Publish for Review” option only.
  • Update posts.
  • Enable / disable plugins (I get all the success messages like “Plugin activated successfully”, but nothing seems to register on the db).
  • Activate / deactivate themes.

I read that one cause for this is the database being full, which results in losing admin privileges, but have checked and the database is not full.

I have access to the source code and have tried to manually install plugins like ‘wp-optimize’, or manually add another admin user but no luck. Nothing gets written to the database.

Does anyone have any other tips or suggestions on other things I can try?

Many thanks!

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  1. For anyone else running into a similar issue with Azure Cloud hosting and ClearDB … read below (even though this is very specific to my site and db config):

    Fixed the issue. This was a database specific issue with Azure and ClearDB and not pointing to the correct database. I was using a free version of the ClearDB MySQL (20MB, up to 4 connections). Upgraded to the next paid version (1GB, up to 16 connections), but even though I was pointing to the new database tables were the old ones.

    For the free version, ClearDB removes admin privileges when you reach the 20MB limit (which I did). That’s why I couldn’t save, publish or do anything a regular admin can do.

    Fixing the database tables and making sure the site is pointing to the upgraded one fixed my issue.