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After I updated to WordPress 3.6, my website suddenly showed nasty error messages:
Missing argument 2 for wpdb::prepare()
At first I thought this was a bug introduced with 3.6 (WP forum) but reality showed me that I had been using $wpdb->prepare in the wrong way - so it wasn't a bug, it was my own mistake. More details can be found in this article.
Quick fix:
Some of us used the $wpdb->prepare() without additional parameters, with queries like this;
$wpdb->get_row($wpdb->prepare( "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table" ));
Obviously the prepare() function is not needed for this query. There is nothing to sanitize. Normally you use prepare() to make sure that parameters that you pass to the query (%d, %s, %f) are cleaned up to avoid malicious crap going down.
The above query should be:
$wpdb->get_row( "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table" );
For queries that do take parameters I made the mistake to do something like this:
$wpdb->prepare( "SELECT * FROM table WHERE id = ".$id." AND active=1" );
Which in this case means that the function prepare() doesn't sanitize anything and is doing absolutely nothing.
Rewrite such a query for example to:
$wpdb->prepare( "SELECT * FROM table WHERE id = %d AND active=1", $id );
This will fix the nasty error message.
hello
sorry for being new at wp.
I believe that in order to solve this error I have to replace some text for the one you present in the text boxes. but I don't know in which file shall I do it and where to find the text to replace.
can somebody help me with that.
The text you have to change can be found in the PHP files of your theme or plugins.
Since you're relatively new to WP:
If you didn't develop either yourself, then contact the developer - because you'll be modifying some of the inner workings of the theme or plugin.
If you DID develop the theme (or plugin) yourself, then checkout the PHP files you find in your theme folder (wp-content/themes/<your theme name>).
The most common files to start with:
thank you for your help.
You're most welcome. Hope you managed fixing the error message 
