If you ever run into this “Plugin does not have a valid header” error when installing a wordpress plugin, here is a very simple solution that tends to work most of the time.
Find the plugin in question.
Lets imagine you just bought EZ Empire Builder and are ready to install it on your Wordpress site. Lets also assume you just updated to Wordpress version 2.9.1 from 2.8.
The first thing to do is to go to your wp-admin panel and click,
‘Plugins > Editor’
Next, see the drop down menu near the top right side of your ‘Edit Plugins’ console. Open the drop down menu and find ‘EZ Empire Builder’ and select it by hitting the ‘Select’ button.
On the right side of the text box you will see several files that make up the EZ Empire Builder plugin. One of those files will be,
‘ezempirebuilder/readme.txt’
Click that link and you will see the contents of that readme.txt file appear on the main text editor.
Inside this file you will see where it says,
‘Tested up to: 2.8.4′ or something similar. This number may vary but the important thing is that it shows at least as high as the current version of Wordpress that you are currently using.
To fix your “Plugin does not have a valid header” problem, simply edit this number to your current version number or higher and save your changes.
Now your headers problem should be resolved until such a date that you update your Wordpress Version to a date beyond your current new setting. Updating to Wordpress 3.0 for example would require this setting to be updated again.
One easy way to avoid this problem in the future is to set it quite a bit ahead. The “Plugin does not have a valid header” error serves no real value and can be easily suppressed so, might as well do it and save yourself the troubles.
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Thank you for this workaround, I hope this works. I got hold of premium plug-ins and having problem with their installation.
NP, should do the trick. There are other reasons this might happen too but I think this is the most commonly overlooked issue…
Hi Gerry, I had high hopes for this plug-in but it broke our blog. The header info error was what was broken and it caused the blog pages to be nothing but weird characters – along with the admin login page. My husband, a programmer, was able to deactivate it and all of the plugins for the blog were deactivated. The header dates were fine – the date thing wasn’t the reason it broke. We left all other plugins deactivated and tried activating just that one. Thousands of weird characters was the result – and the blog was broken again. We deleted the plugin and reactivated our originals and things are working well again.
Let me know if you isolate what the issue is.
Thanks!
Same as ‘Linda’, I am getting the same issues, and no amount of changing the build date works. I simply deleted the entire WPYA folder via FTP to get my normal WP sinstalation back [as I couldn't reach it via the 'plugins' scrren].
Sounds good, despite this trouble!
Best wishes,
Mike
Hi guys, here are a couple other common issues that may cause this issue…
1) You use the Wordpress Upload plugin to install the plugin from within Wordpress. Sometimes this will cause issues. Instead, unzip the package and upload the plugin via your favorite FTP software into the wp-content/plugins/ folder.
2) To use bumblesoft plugins, you’ll need “Zend Optimizer” installed and activated on your server. Most hosting companies offer this automatically by default, but some do not. If you need help in determining if your server has “Zend Optimizer” installed or not please feel free to email us or your hosting company for further information.
Thank you for the explanation.
First I wanted to install a plugin that didn’t show in the dashboard.When finding the desired plugin via add plugins it indicated “installed” (from an earlier installation). So i deleted the file in wp-content/plugins.
Then clicked install to get the plugin. Then pressed activate and got the no-valid-header error.
Then following your instruction, the plugin didn’t show in the plugin-drop-down list.
So I looked for the plugin’s accompanying README.txt file via cPanel and changed the content and saved it.
But then activating the plugin failed with the same error message.
That’s a refresh problem I take it. But then I’m lost how to do that intelligently. Pressing Firefox’s refresh before pressing activate will try to reinstall and fail because the plugin is already there.
Any idea?
Thanks!
So, changing the readme didn’t help and uploading via FTP instead of using wp-admin installer also didn’t help? Just want to make sure I followed that correctly…
this one is good… i was having this error with wp viral plugin now will sort it out,..
thnx for sharing….
I’m having the exact problem listed by Joerg:
Plugin wasn’t showing up,
tried to add it but was listed as already “installed” (I suppose from back when it was a wordpress.com site instead of self-hosted!),
deleted that file,
tried to install it again but got the no-valid-header error,
deleted it again and uploaded the file via FTP,
but the same problem still.
I should have added, the readme file already says “Tested up to: 3.0.1″ which is what I’m using. The plugin shows up in “editor” but nowhere else (not on the plugins list, and if I search for it under “add plugins,” it says it’s already installed.