After the carousel died after upgrading to the latest Wordpress I decided to keep at it since I hate my site not being perfect. The persistence paid off! I seemed to have fixed this issue with some very easy sql manipulation.

I took a look at the section of the options table where Massive stores its options and found that the string looked like this before the update:

….’massive_theme’, ‘a:24:{s:15….

And looked like this after the update:

….’massive_theme’, ‘I:24:{s:15….

Notice the difference? Where it should read ‘a:24, it instead says ‘I:24. So I changed the “I” to an “a” in the sql entry of the current database I have and it is working again and I can even change the featured items without issue. I’m no sql master, so I don’t understand why that change occurred during the update (or even persisted when going back to an older Wordpress version) or why this change fixes it, but the problem is gone and I suppose I should be pleased with at least that triumph.

1. Chris Says:
   August 18th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

   Good find. I haven’t yet upgraded to 2.6.1, and I would’ve lost it seeing this problem. Bookmarked for future reference!

2. Suresh Says:
   October 12th, 2008 at 7:17 am

   Hello, does the featured element thingy work with the latest version of 2.6.2 ?

   I can’t seem to be able to do it.

3. geneome Says:
   October 12th, 2008 at 1:53 pm

   @ SURESH

   I’m running 2.6.2 with the featured content working fine. If it’s not working for you even after the fix I posted above, the other option I had some success with was to upgrade wordpress then go into the sql table and remove the Massive News lines completely. Then, I switch themes (like K2 or something) then switch back to Massive News. The Massive News sql lines will be re-created and the carousel should work again.