Hi Thomas,

This isn't normal, LayerSlider should automatically update the database in the background. You can force a database update by navigating to System Status and pressing the Update Database button. This should attempt to fix any database related issue.

In that case it must be a server configuration issue. For example, misconfigured database permissions can prevent LayerSlider to make the necessary changes. Since this is an area that we don't have access to, you might need to contact the web hosting company to look into this issue. 

Also, I can send you the database table definitions, so your web developer can manually recreate them.

CREATE TABLE wp_layerslider (
    id int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    group_id int(10),
    author int(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    name varchar(100) DEFAULT '',
    slug varchar(100) DEFAULT '',
    data mediumtext NOT NULL,
    date_c int(10) NOT NULL,
    date_m int(10) NOT NULL,
    schedule_start int(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    schedule_end int(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    flag_dirty tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    flag_hidden tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    flag_deleted tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    flag_popup tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    flag_group tinyint(1) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    PRIMARY KEY (id)
) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci;
CREATE TABLE wp_layerslider_drafts (
    id int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    slider_id int(10) NOT NULL,
    author int(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    data mediumtext NOT NULL,
    date_c int(10) NOT NULL,
    date_m int(10) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY  (id),
    UNIQUE KEY slider_id (slider_id)
) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci;
CREATE TABLE wp_layerslider_revisions (
    id int(10) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    slider_id int(10) NOT NULL,
    author int(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT 0,
    data mediumtext NOT NULL,
    date_c int(10) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY  (id)
) DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_520_ci;

Just a quick follow-up: If it's a permission issue, which is very likely, it's probably affecting the CREATE and ALTER privileges of the database user. Otherwise, your whole site would be unusable. If my assumption is correct, then manually recreating the database tables would solve this without any side effects. However, I would still recommend going after the permission issues to eliminate such issues that might affect other plugins on your site in the future.

Hi Kevin,

Of course, we'll help you. We want our customers to have a good experience using our products, and it's important to us that you have a working plugin that you can continue using for as long as you wish. Also, I'd like to thank you for the extensive and very professional report that has already helped us eliminate many possible issues.

Since this is someone else's ticket, we don't want to bother them or accidentally share sensitive information, so we ask you to reach out to us from our contact page: https://layerslider.com/contact/

Please send us a temporary WP admin access, and then we'll investigate the issue and email you back as soon as we have a solution.

Please note that these kinds of issues are almost always caused by external factors like updating your WordPress theme or other plugins. Since we have to do a lot of investigative work to find the source of the problem, we kindly ask you to have proper support coverage in the future if another issue arises. I don't ask you to purchase anything now. However, since you bought LayerSlider, we've introduced subscriptions that cost less than the old support extension while providing a usable license and double the support coverage. I understand that this might be strange at first, but the new model is a way better deal for customers and offers much more for less money.