@blenki101 I am very sorry to hear this has happened and we want to help you get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible.
First can you answer:
- What version of WordPress are you running?Which versions of the Charitable plugin(s) are currently active?
- Please go to Charitable > Tools > System Info and share the results (via Pastebin) here so we can see your full environment.
Investigating the Emails & Dates In Charitable, donor emails are triggered when a donation is “saved.” Since there is no native “bulk email past donors” feature, the emails and date changes are likely linked to a process that forced a bulk update on your donation records.
- The Content: What was the subject line and body of the emails? Did they all go out at once?
- Email Logs: Do you have an email logging plugin (like WP Mail Logging) or an SMTP service (like SendGrid/Mailgun) where we can see any logs generated by these?
- Recent Changes: Were any updates, imports, or migrations performed recently? Did anyone run a database search-and-replace (e.g., Better Search Replace or a migration plugin)?
- Individual Logs: Go to the view/edit screen for an affected donation and look at the Donation Log. and confirm if the first entry in that log still shows the original correct date/time. Confirm if the dates changes are on the donations list page and outside the logs on the donation pages as well.
Technical Error Logs We need to see if the server caught any specific failures during this event. Please check your server error logs for warnings or messages related to the Charitable plugin and share them here or via Pastebin
If logs are not currently enabled, your hosting panel may have an option to turn them on, or you can follow the WordPress debug guide here:
https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/debug/debug-wordpress/
To prevent any further emails from being sent to donors immediately, go to Charitable > Settings > Emails and disable the “Donation Receipt” and “New Donation” notifications until we find the cause.
- Before attempting any fixes or restores you have the option to go to Charitable > Tools and exporting your current donation so you have a snapshot of the current state.
- The most reliable fix is a database restoration from your host. However, if the Donation Logs mentioned above are still intact, please let us know, as there may be a way to restore dates from that internal log.
As soon as we can get additional information we can try to determine what triggered this. For privacy concerns, please be careful not to share donor email/information in the replies. Our team will continue to investigate this with the information we have at the moment and if there’s any additional questions or recommendations, we will reach out. Thank you!
@blenki101 I wanted to follow up and let you know that we have just released Charitable 1.8.9.3.
While we are still awaiting the details requested in my previous reply to help identify the root cause, this update includes new diagnostic tools that will be very useful for your situation.
Please update the plugin and navigate to Charitable → Tools. There you will find:
- Email System Diagnostics: To verify exactly how and when emails are being triggered.
- Debug Log Scanner & Donation Form Error Logs: To check for any server-side errors that occurred during the time your donation dates were modified.
Please review these logs and share any relevant (and privacy-safe) information here. This data is essential for us to determine if an external process or server conflict triggered those updates. Thank you in advance for your patience as we review any info you provide.
We are going to go ahead and close this thread for now. But if you’d like us to assist further, please feel welcome to continue the conversation.
Thanks!
