How To Fix The Parsing JSON Error For CommentLuv & Other WordPress Maintenance Tips

Once again this weekend, I was visiting a lot of blogs and commenting on them. On three particular blogs they had the CommentLuv plugin, and on all 3 I got that stupid “Parsing JSON Error” message that I’m sure many of you who have visited blogs have received. This time I was irked, because my sometimes workaround, which is to hit the F5 key (after copying your comment in case you have to paste it back) to reset the other person’s blog, in case it’s their error, didn’t work.

DBManager Menu
WP-DBManager menu

This means it was time to do some research. You know what; no one had my answer, and that irked me to no end.

One blog post I found said to go into my CommentLuv settings, open the technical settings, and uncheck the box that says “use security nonce for ajax calls”. That wouldn’t work because it was already unchecked.

Another said to clear your cache, but it assumed we all use a caching plugin on our blogs. I’d tried that some years ago and it crashed my blog, so that wasn’t going to solve my issue.

However, clearing the cache seemed to be a big thing on a lot of forums I looked at, even to the point of clearing your browser cache (don’t do it for this purpose; it doesn’t work). So I was frustrated to no end.

Until I remembered that I do have an interesting plugin that I’m not sure everyone else has. It’s called WP-DBManager, and it’s basically a plugin that accesses your database and lets you, well, do a lot of different things if you look at the image above, which comes up when you click on Database on your main WordPress menu (which appears after you load the plugin).

For the purpose I was searching for however, the choice was Optimize DB. You’re actually supposed to run it at least once a month to make sure things are working well but, like brushing your teeth, who really follows that rule? I ran that option, it only took a few seconds, then I went back to two of the blogs where CommentLuv failed to find my blog posts, ran a quick test (I just put in one word in the comment section, filled out the normal name, email & link area)… and all was right with the world!

That got me to thinking about other plugins I use, though not on a continual basis, that might help some of you. Let’s look at some of these, though it’s possible I’ve written about them in the past (who goes & looks at my old posts anyway, unless I highlight them?).

Another plugin I use to help clear things up is called WP-Optimize, which is similar to the database plugin except it clears out all those revisions we all make to our blogs from time to time and allows you to optimize WordPress core tables… but you have to be cautious with this one because it will warn you that some of the options are only when things aren’t working well.

I know I’ve talked about this one before, but it seems like a lot of folks are having their blogs hacked into lately. It’s called Limit Login Attempts, and it basically allows you to set how many times someone can try a username and password before it locks them out.

Mine is set at 4 times, at which time it won’t accept anymore tries from that particular IP address for 4500 minutes the first time (about 3 days), 300 hours the second time (12 1/2 days) and 900 hours the third time (37 1/2 days). This will pretty much stop any bots trying to get into your blog that way, but you’ll probably want to add the WordPress Firewall 2 plugin to help shield your blog from those suckers also.

The final plugin I’m going to mention is called WordPress Database Backup; that’s pretty self explanatory I assume, but I have mine set up to send me a file once a month in case something happens that causes the blog to crash. Luckily I’ve never had to use it, but I know some folk have lost it all (though there are other ways to find their information; this is just the fastest way to handle things).

I think that should get some things fixed and protected on your blog. Let me know how it works for you.
 

10 thoughts on “How To Fix The Parsing JSON Error For CommentLuv & Other WordPress Maintenance Tips”

  1. Am using that DB manager plugin and apart from these functionalities, it also changes the default wp-admin to our desired one which is my favorite part of that plugin.

    Thanks for the post to let me know of other plugins and how to use it.

  2. Well, I am glad you found out what was wrong. I know that was very frustrating for you. I have those plug-ins on my site already because of your great advice.

  3. Comment Luv was one of my favorite plugins and had I not gotten overrun with questionable comments I might still be using it.

    FWIW, I am referring to comments that looked like the writer had read my post but linked to pages that were clearly questionable.

    Some of them showed up every day so for a while I let it go thinking they were regular readers but eventually they made me wonder what would happen if they didn’t get links anymore.

    As soon as I turned off CommentLuv they disappeared.

    Anyhoo, I still think it is a fantastic plugin so don’t take this as me saying it is bad.

    I used to use a couple of the plugins you mentioned above, the DB manager and optimizer and I really liked those too.

    They did a nice job of keeping things cleaned up on the backend.

    The only reason I stopped using them was because the hosting company I use supposedly uses their own system to take care of those things.

    One of these days I need to spend some more time learning about how it all works so I can figure out if what they say they’re doing is really working or not.

    1. As it regards the CommentLuv thing, with the premium version you can remove the “luv” while still allowing the comment. At that point if folk stay away then it’s on them. I actually use it more for myself than for others because it gives me leads on articles and topics I might not even think to check based on just the domain name.

      I also don’t leave it up to my host to protect my blog; I like protecting myself 🙂

  4. Hi Mitch,

    Thanks for the wonderful post.

    I have stuck with this problem with some of the blogging sites.

    Now its been resolved.

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