Well I followed your suggestion but now I'm back where i Started. The php changes weren't that big to begin with, but nevertheless reverting them made the thing stable again.
Anyway now i have another issue. I had a button on the screen shown this
[ [ closeDiclaimerLabel ] ] (the square brackets without the spaces)
I checked here in the forums and it pointed out that this means that it's missing something in the language pack. I went and the php file refering the button reads as follows:
<button id="closeTermsAndConditions" type="button" class="btn btn-lg btn-primary" data-dismiss="modal">
<?php echo get_string('closeDisclaimerLabel', 'theme_xxxxx'); ?></button>
i traced back to the theme_xxx.php and it showed this:
#$string['closeDisclaimerLabel'] = 'Close Terms and Conditions';
i uncommented the line, and purged all the caches, and evidently it worked, but then the aforementioned DML error happened, so, anyway i can fix this very little annoyance? (i won't even called it a bug)
thanks
Brandon