I’m not sure if this happened after an upgrade or something, but I logged in to WordPress this morning and found that ALL comments on the blog had disappeared! No approved… no pending… no spam. I knew that couldn’t be right, so I did some research and found this post on the WordPress Support forums:

Been using WordPress for years without hitch. I recently however upgraded to 2.9.1 and nobody can now post comments. If I try to post a comment, the page goes blank (on this url http://eastlower.co.uk/wp-comments-post.php#comment-)

Worse, all my previous comments from 606 posts appear to have disappeared (at least it says they have on the dashboard).

I’ve contacted my administrator who says my database in phpmyadmin is fine – though the comments table says ‘in use’.

I logged into phpMyAdmin and sure enough, the comments table says “in use.” I scrolled down a little farther and this comment seemed promising:

In Cpanel click on MySql Databases. On the next page you should see your MySql DBs. click on the “repair” button for the db you are using for your site. Hope it helps. Worked for me and I had the same problem.

I had some trouble finding this “repair” button and once I found it, I thought I would do a little step by step for others that had problems. This is using phpMyAdmin version 3.4.5.

Step 1: Log into your cPanel (located on your server, separate from WordPress) and then log into phpMyAdmin. Click on your WordPress database. BACK UP YOUR DATABASE BEFORE GOING ANY FURTHER.

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Step 2: In the list of tables, locate wp_comments and click the check box next to it.

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Step 3: Scroll down and choose “Repair Table” from the drop down box.

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Step 4: Success! It’s been repaired successfully.

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And now all my comments are back, even those lovely spam comments

See, that wasn’t too hard! Hopefully that helps you!