mystery products

We are having an issue where a product that has been deleted from the backend catalog is still visible to customers on the front side. This has been happening at least 2 years with a handful of items (we only sporadically discover them by accident). I have checked through the catalog to be sure it isn't hiding somewhere with a hidden character in the sku or anything like that. What would cause this and how can it be fixed? Customers keep trying to order things we just don't have!

Our site is https://www.autolicenseplatesandframes.com and one item I know we're having an issue with is model#AS5372 "5372 "Buzzoff" Bass Fish License Plate".

Database: MySQL 5.1.72-rel14.10
PHP Version: 5.3.29 (Zend: 2.3.0)
We haven't made any changes to the site in several years.

Thank you for any suggestions!

If you're referring to this item: http://www.autolicenseplatesandframes.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_14&products_id=13608 then I suspect perhaps the one you deleted was in a different category.

Two things you could test right now:
a) in the Admin, go go product #13608 and disable it (click the green toggle button on the category list for 1_14)
You should then see it no longer available on the storefront.

and/or
b) use the Admin to delete the product, and test what happens on the storefront. If it does indeed disappear, then I suspect your previous deletions were done to products in a different category ... or you're using some external product-import tool and you've somehow re-added previously-delete items back to the store using that tool.

I wish it were that simple. The product is no longer listed in the back end of the catalog. I've searched by sku, by id number, by parts of the name and looked through the entire category. Other products delete just fine,we do that on a daily basis. Just every so often one of them stays on the front end.

If you compare your two configure.php files for:
/includes/configure.php
/yoursecret_admin/includes/configure.php

are they using the same paths and database settings? :lookaroun

What type of hosting are you using??
Might it be "cloud"

I've had that happen but I am not by my notebook and can't remember the exact reason.

I found it by going into myphpadmin ( or phpmyadmin ). I remember it ( the product not in the backend) was in products-categories table but not the products table. So I figured the logic displaying products in the store was somehow different than the logic in the backend. But I didn't get any further on my investigation. And I was going to write something to search for these dangling products but it got pushed to my todo list.

Lruskauff

Going into the PhpMyAdmin --> products database and deleting the item there did the trick! We still don't know why it happens, but at least can remove them now. Thank you all!

I didn't find my notes yet but I think it happens when using the products to categories. I am guessing that I might have deleted the master category and didn't assign a new one. So it was left in the products to categories? I still need to test this theory. To find them all you could run an SQL that looks for all products in products to category without a match in products.