Page save function stopped working

[JetPackJan]

We're running a ProcessWire 3.0.230 webpage and ran into an issue today were we cannot save changes to a very long content page. Other pages are working fine and can be edited and saved without issues. When editing that particular page all changes are discarded when the save button is pressed after the backend editor-page reloads. The public front-end page still shows an older version of the page and elements present in the editor are not visible in the front-end page.

How can we restore the page back to a working copy?

I tried a lot of things to fix it but saving the page just does not work anymore for some reason.

• Editing existing elements on the page works but saving they are restored to the previous state
• Adding new elements on the page works but saving just removes them again
• Removing elements at the end of the page highlights them for deletion but they are restored when saved
• Adding elements at the end by cloning still works (headline_repeater) and these cloned elements do persist after saving but now the very last element already exits three times and they cannot be deleted
• Newly added cloned elements show up as new elements in the editor but after saving these elements are still stylized as being new elements and saving does not change them to the dark gray color of the other elements
• After saving once all page elements in the backend editor have names like "Main content 74". Reloading the page in the browser restores the correct names.
• Changing the page title or long title is not possible (old values restored after save)
• Changing the URL ("name") not working (old value restored after save)
• Moving the page in the menu tree works
• Internal links to that content page are working and so is the list of backlinks to that content page
• Move to trash works, restore works, but saving the page after changes still has no effect
• Changing the page to hidden, unpublished, published, locking and unlocking all work but do not change the issues
• Duplicating the page works, copied page has the exact same issues

I created a new page, copied over almost all elements from the broken page and the page worked fine at first and I was able to edit and save the page. When I added further elements to this new page however it eventually also stopped saving any progress. I now have two pages that I can no longer edit with multiple cloned elements at the very end of the page that cannot be deleted.

More details:
The page consists mostly of "headline_repeater" elements, "highlights", "images" and "dividers". In total there are 74 elements. The size of all images used for the page take up less than 30Mb on my computer, all jpgs except one png. The exact same images work fine on another, older webpage of ours.

log message:
page/edit/?id=8507 Removed 'pic' temp file(s) for page /processwire/repeaters/for-field-109/for-page-8507/1698316395-0973-1c/ - image_name.jpg (Pageimages)

log file-errors:
?activity=PageEdit_page_edit__id_8507&started=…    unlink: Unable to unlink file: /site/assets/ProCache-44b008762a3c94ae0d076e76d359f3/.last-maintenance
(ProCache is now uninstalled, issues still persists)

Any help to restore the page to working would be much appreciated.

KR,
Jan

[elabx]

Try pushing the max_input_vars value  in the server.

[JetPackJan]

11 hours ago, elabx said:

Try pushing the max_input_vars value  in the server.

Thank you, that enabled me to save the page again.

[FireWire]

Just ran into this issue on a site and found this. Worked like a charm!

If you have pages with a large amount of fields or a lot of data that may change, keep this tip in your back pocket.

@elabx Many thanks 🙏