FrontPage Not Displaying Properly

16 posts from 3 voices

• Started 7 months ago by EdgeWP
• Latest reply from Nick
• This topic is closed
• This topic is resolved

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1. 

   EdgeWP
   Member

   I'm experiencing a problem with my frontpage not displaying properly.. The page name is Frontpage and is set as my frontpage in the abundance theme option settings. It's using a dynamic template with just three elements..

   http://screencast.com/t/jDn3I2KqckM9

   Up until just today it has been working and displaying just fine. Yes, I've made several modification.. But, only to the custom.css and woocommerce-hooks.php, well and one line, 216, in the style.css for the header logo, but as far as I remember, and can tell, nothing else..

   I haven't installed any plug-ins lately, but here is a list of what I have installed..

   http://screencast.com/t/xmHcafnP#

   I've even gone back thru most all the folders to compare date codes for each file in the theme and plug-ins to make sure all the file dates and times match... (thinking maybe I forgot or am overlooking something that I had done)(which is possible)..

   Now here is the kicker.. If I view the page from the editor, it displays just fine! When I add the same page (Frontpage) to the menu, and click on it, it also opens up and displays just fine. When I duplicate the page as Frontpage2, it also displays just fine thru the editor or menu. But even if I change the theme setting to use the Frontpage2 as the front page instead, the homepage does not display correctly.. heh.. I just don't get it.. So frustrating this can be at times..

   Here is a link to my site..

   http://www.htech.net

   I've added both Frontpage and Frontpage2 as pages to a pull down menu under Home. I've also added Frontpage to the main menu itself as a page.. Click on any one of them, or all of them, as they will all display correctly, and the way it is suppose to be.. But click on Home again.. and walla, the top element is gone.. and it's exactly the same page! I just don't get it.. could someone please explain to me how this might occur.. What could I possibly be overlooking?

   Ok.. Just to answer I know what will be the next question.. here is the complete content of my custom.css...

   
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Commented out line 216 of /wp-content/themes/abundance/style.css /"height:200px; remove this if you want no specific height for the header. it will adjust to the logo size then"/ (11/05/2012) */
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Modifications to Re-Size and Top Align Search Form/Submit and Social Bookmarks on All Headers (11/05/2012) */
#header #searchform {
top: 25px;
}
#header #searchsubmit {
height: 25px;
}
#header .social_bookmarks {
top: 26px;
}
#header #s {
padding-top: 5px;
padding-bottom: 5px;
}
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Modification to Fix Text Alignment of Product Description using List View on Product Category Pages with "WooCommerce Grid / List toggle" Plug-in v0.1 (11/13/2012) */
ul.products.list li.product .thumbnail_container {
width: 200px;
float: left;
}
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Modification to Adjust Price font Size in Title Container of Single Product Pages (11/12/2012) */
#top .price_container .price .amount, #top .price_container .price ins .amount, #top .price_container .price ins {
font-size: 20px;
font-weight: normal;
}
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Modification to Right Align "Add to Cart" Button in Tab Area of Single Product Pages (11/13/2012) */
/* Additional Modifications were made to /wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/woocommerce-hooks.php to Remove All Contents of Summary Area and Place "Add to Cart" Button in Tab Area (11/13/2012) */
#top.single-product form.cart {
margin-bottom: 0px;
float: right;
}
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Modification to Properly Align Tab Area of Single Product Pages with Product Thumbnails (11/13/2012) */
#top div.product .woocommerce_tabs {
padding: 0 0 0;
}
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/


   Is there something here that I'm not seeing? Modifications that I've made to the woocommerce-hooks.php couldn't have anything to do with that element not showing on the frontpage could it?

   Sorry to be a bother here lately, but your help and assistance has been and is greatly appreciated!!!

   Posted 7 months ago #
2. 

   Devin
   Moderator

   Hi EdgeWP,

   I've not seen something like that happen before. I'm going to tag the rest of the support crew to see if they have any additional input. We may need to log in and take a look from your backend and then see if we can duplicate the issue as well.

   Regards,

   Devin

   Posted 7 months ago #
3. 

   EdgeWP
   Member

   Thanks Devin, I'll do whatever it takes, just let me know..

   Posted 7 months ago #
4. 

   Nick
   Moderator

   Hi,

   1) In your first screen cast, I see you are opening the <h2 and the <span tags, but I am not seeing them closed... </h2 </span ... Please check that is the case.

   2) When you write 'When I duplicate the page as Frontpage2, it ...' , Can you please elaborate on how you go about duplicating Frontpage ? If you are using a plugin to duplicate a page with a custom template, the page will have a duplicate, but the custom template most likely will not duplicate using third party software/

   *** 3) Your site is private and I can't see it. I get forwarded to a login screen with no option to sign up. "Only registered and logged in users are allowed to view this site. Please login now" ***

   Thanks,

   Nick

   Posted 7 months ago #
5. 

   EdgeWP
   Member

   1.) Thanks Nick.. In actuality, I was closing </h2> but was not <span>.. I had been wondering what was causing the styling to be off in IE8 and not the other browsers I'm was using to check.. Thank You for that catch!

   Speaking of IE8, after checking, those two code snippets you gave me to remove the descritions under the related products on single product page both seem to work for IE9, Firefox, and Chrome, but NOT IE8..

   
#top.single-product li div:nth-of-type(even) {
display: none;
}

   #top.single-product li div:nth-child(3) {
display: none;
}


   Off topic here, a completely different issue, and not going to worry about it at the moment, but since that thread is now closed, just thought I'd let you know... Kind of a pain how making sure things work accross 4 browsers(and multiple versions), let alone how things are going to be seen from a mobile or pad environment.. man oh man... heh

   2.) I used a plug-in called "Duplicate Post".. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/duplicate-post/ .. It actually seemed to do a good job of creating a new draft of the frontpage(even though that page is using a custom dynamic template), and then allowing me publish it from there.. I have not fully tested it by no means, but the one time I did use it, seemed to work ok.. Thanks for the heads up though, I will keep that in mind, if and/or when I use that in the future...

   3.) Yes, sorry about that, late last night I reactivated the "Private Only" plug-in I had been using.. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/private-only/ .. In hindsight, I should probably be doing all of this conceptual design and content creation offline, as I really don't want the public to be able to see the site until it's in a move complete state..

   But, last night I did some extensive testing! I deactivated every plug-in I had installed (which again in hindsight, I should have done before posting my problem to begin with).. Well, after doing so, the element was back.. go figure.. heh.. so at that point, I went through the process of reactivating each plug-in one by one...

   Come to find out, apparently it is the "Groups" plug-in.. http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/groups/ .. that is somehow causing the issue. I'm still not sure why.. I actually installed that plug-in over a week ago now, just using the defaults settings with no restrictions, and up until yesterday (when I made some modifications to the custom.css and woocommerce-hooks.php), it was not causing this issue, or any others that I could tell.. I even went so far as to delete the groups plug-in and reinstalled it, but "Anytime", I activate that plug-in, that top element on the frontpage disappears.. But Only on the Homepage, Not if I view that same page anywhere else.. So Strange!!!

   Although deactivating this plug-in has fixed the frontpage issue for the moment, I'm still kind of in a dilemma. When the site finally becomes active, I do plan on having a time based subscription membership area. My initial idea was to use this groups plug-in, combined with the woocommerce groups, and woocommerce subscription plug-ins to accomplish this.. There will be a couple different levels of membership, and each will be available for purchase through woocommerce. So it just seemed like using the combination of these three plug-ins would be the easiest and most seamless way to accomplish that.. Being able to let a user purchase and subscribe automatically thru the cart, while allowing me to track, maintain, generate reports, as well as hopefully the plug-ins automatically managing the content available to each specific level.. etc...

   But now, if I can't get around the problem this groups plug-in seems to be causing, with no restrictions currently in place.. I'm not sure what I'm going to do.. The other two plug-ins are not free, and I'm definitely not going to purchase them until I can resolve this first.. Would you possibly have any other suggestions of a different way to implement and maintain a time based subscription membership area?

   I've created a special login for the support staff here.. User Name = support ... Password = support ... [this is not admin login/pw - just allows entry to see front end, no need to censor. -nick] and at the moment have left the groups plug-in activated, with the frontpage and frontpage2 still on the menu, so that you can see exactly what I'm talking about. It's only a subscriber based role, so I'm not worried about anyone from this forum accessing it as well, just trying to keep it out of view from the general public at the moment.. Hope you understand and that this is not a problem..

   Thanks

   Posted 7 months ago #
6. 

   Nick
   Moderator

   Hi,

   My email is usjahm aaaattttt gmail dddooottt com. Please make me a temp login/pw to the admin area. Let me take a look. I can't help you with the ie8 otherwise since i don't have the plugin you are using with Woocommerce, and I have no time to recreate what you've built to test the duplication issue.

   Thanks,

   Nick

   Posted 7 months ago #
7. 

   EdgeWP
   Member

   Done... Please confirm you recieved information..

   Posted 7 months ago #
8. 

   Nick
   Moderator

   Hi,

   Confirmed. Give me a few hours please.

   Thanks,

   Nick

   Posted 7 months ago #
9. 

   EdgeWP
   Member

   no worries... no rush... at your convenience... appreciate the help!!!

   Posted 7 months ago #
10. 

    Nick
    Moderator

    Hi,

    The descriptions are gone in IE8 and all other browsers. I took care of it on the plugin level. Just remember that if you update the Woo plugins , the customization will be overwritten.Yet now the descriptions are guaranteed to remain gone on any browser. The CSS patch is no longer needed and was removed.

    As for your other issue, its actually is quite interesting because all 3 versions (no query string, id=637, id=956) are not working correctly. While 637 and 956 (frontpage 1, frontpage 2 links) are identical, they share the same problem , a horizontal image banner is missing above the footer. Yet in the no query string version (when you click the logo to get to home page), the graphic banner reappears above the footer , while the template part above the slider disappears.

    Since this is an artificial problem created by cloning a template, there is no benefit in investigating the cause (though I suspect as I wrote before that the cloning plugin was unable to make a 100% duplicate, another problem could be that the template was attached to the page while it was being cloned. The obvious solution would be not to clone, or try a different cloning plugin or try cloning without the template attached. I would check the forums and google to see if this issue has been addressed by some guru.

    I would not recommend keeping your current site after the cloning experiment since there is no real way to know what took place and if other values were modified which might cause long term side effects detrimental to the business. You should delete all the tables and re-install fresh to ensure the integrity of the database is maintained.

    *please don't forget to deactivate the temp user account I used*

    Thanks,

    Nick

    Posted 7 months ago #
11. 

    EdgeWP
    Member

    Thank you very much for the plug-in modification.. I'll back that up and take a look at how you did that so that I might learn myself..

    But as far as my main issue, the top element of the frontpage page template, used for the homepage, disappearing.. That was Not created by the cloning. I actually never cloned frontpage to frontpage2 until after this problem occurred.. I was just trying an experiment to duplicate that frontpage and then use that copy as the homepage instead, to see if it would fix the problem..

    But the homepage (frontpage), being defined in the theme options "Frontpage Settings" is the exact same page as id-637 (not cloned), I just added two menu items to point to that exact same page as the Theme Options - Frontpage Settings - is pointing too.. frontpage2 is the only cloned paged on the site..

    If I'm not totally off base here.. I believe the problem you were seeing on 637 and 956 missing the horizontal footer image is just a part of how I had the footer theme options set.. In the Abundance - Theme Options - Footer ... I had added a Logo Footer.. but just below that in the "Footer Logo Display", I had that set to "Display only on frontpage" .. I've now changed that to "Display everywhere", and you will now see those footer images on 637 and 956 as well...

    Still does not fix the problem with that top element though.. Strangest thing though.. As I mentioned in previous post.. I can go into the plug-ins, and de-activate the "groups" plug-in, and that top element of the homepage will appear again.. But the strange thing of it is, I originally installed that "groups" plug-in on the 3rd, have not made any changes to the plug-in or it's settings since installation, and this homepage issue just appeared last Friday, Before every using the cloning plug-in..

    I've left your login in place, if you'd be so kind as to take one more quick look.. Now that the pages should be exactly the same, maybe you might be able to determine what could possibly be causing that top template element disappearing from the homepage and not the others..

    Thank You So Very Much!

    Posted 7 months ago #
12. 

    Nick
    Moderator

    Hi,

    Sorry for the delay. Please try a clean install and you will see that what you are describing does not happen. My suggestion is to do just that. This time you can use a child theme , where you would make all your modifications while leaving the original (parent) theme intact. This way the next time there is an update , you will not need to waste time changing any modifications.

    I will shortly post a link where you can download a child theme for Abundance, as well as instructions on how to use it to override the parent theme without touching any files or needing to know how to write code.

    Thanks,

    Nick

    Posted 7 months ago #
13. 

    EdgeWP
    Member

    Hate to think I have to delete everything and start from scratch, but, if that is what you suggest, I will do it.. Reinstalling wordpress, the theme, and all the plug-ins is not difficult, but recreating the menus, pages, content and such will take some time.. Working now on trying to capture and document all that I can, to refer back too after it's all deleted, to hopefully make this process less painful and time consuming..

    Yes, in hindsight, I should have used a Child Theme from the start, but currently lack the knowledge in how to do that.. Will wait patiently for your link and instructions..

    Can't thank you enough for all your help!

    Posted 7 months ago #
14. 

    Nick
    Moderator

    Hi,

    Believe me this theme will be alive for years on with updates and cool new stuff, and you dont want to figure out a year or two from now what changes you made last week when you update. By using a child theme you will know on the spot, which just makes life a little easier.

    What i would do, is drop the current theme in a directory, and next to it put a fresh unmodified theme. Then run WinMerge.org on both folders, and it will instantly show you side by side which files are changed and even show you where, so this way you can just make a note of all the files that you modified , because those are gonna go into the child theme.

    You can actually make a child theme yourself:
    1) make a new folder inside the themes folder right next to Abundance and call it (anything) but in this example I will use Abundance-Child.
    2) inside that folder make one file style.css and add this to the top.
    

    /*
    Theme Name: Abundance Child
    Description: Abundance Child Theme
    Theme URI: http://kriesi.at/themes/abundance/
    Template: Abundance
    Version: 1.0
    Author: Kriesi
    Author URI: http://www.kriesi.at
    */
    
    @import url("../abundance/style.css");
    
    /*
    *------------- Insert custom css styles after the next line
    */

    If you changed the name of Abundance folder to something else just make sure the import line above has the name of what your theme folder is called. That's it. You just go to Appearance where you activate themes, and you will see a second theme with no image (you can drop an image in the child directory. When you activate it, you have a new theme which is a copy of abundance. Now if you want to add CSS you no longer use custom.css you put it in this new style.css file.

    You make another file and call it functions.php and you can add functions in there. Since it will run before the parent, you can override the parent functions, all of them.

    If you want to edit a template, you copy any file from the parent theme (Abundance), and drop it in the child theme (ABundance-child) and you make your edits only in the child folder, never touching the original. Because first, Wordpress will check the child, if it doesn't find a file there, it will go to the parent.

    So if you want to edit a template /abundance/admin/php/includes/some-file.php ... you copy that file, then you create empty folders to match the structure in the child to look like /abundance-child/admin/php/includes/some-file.php

    Do not copy all the files into the child, but only the ones you actually modify. This way your parent is never touched and when you update you just overwrite it, and the child with your modifications is preserved.

    Thanks,

    Nick

    Posted 7 months ago #
15. 

    EdgeWP
    Member

    Thank You!, for all your help Nick.. This problem has been resolved.. I've been meaning to get back here and close this out, but with the holidays in the States, and couple other things going on, it's been a bit crazy..

    Just one more question, although way off topic, and I'll close this out as resolved..

    What's being used here on this site, for all the support threads? Is there some type of theme for it? Is it a blog? A forum? BB of some type? It looks like a very nice way to handle support, and I'd like to mimic it for my needs in some way or another..

    Thanks Again for All the Help!!!!!

    Posted 6 months ago #
16. 

    Nick
    Moderator

    Hi,

    Thanks for taking the time, we appreciate it. If you have other questions, you know where to find us! :)

    I never looked before what the support forum runs on, but looking at the source it looks like a custom theme with a highly modified bbpress plugin http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress/

    Enjoy the theme and good luck!

    Nick

    Posted 6 months ago #

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