Help me with static page problems in Wordpress, please?
February 2, 2014 12:44 PM Subscribe
I am having a problem with my website, which is entirely run in Wordpress.
I have WP set up to use a static home page. I followed the directions for creating a homepage and a page for posts to appear on. But if you look at the fluid page in question, for some reason the entire page is duplicated? I cannot for the life of me figure out what is going on there, I hope someone here can.
It is not duplicated on my screen.
Have you tried looking at the page in another browser, or clearing your cookies, logging out of WP, and viewing the page?
posted by lownote at 1:12 PM on February 2, 2014
Have you tried looking at the page in another browser, or clearing your cookies, logging out of WP, and viewing the page?
posted by lownote at 1:12 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: I have cleared cookies and flushed cache etc. I haven't tried another browser b/c I haven't updated IE in forever, and uninstalled Firefox a couple years ago when I stopped using it.
bcwinters: which file(s) would you need to look at? I can link to them directly if that would help.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:16 PM on February 2, 2014
bcwinters: which file(s) would you need to look at? I can link to them directly if that would help.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:16 PM on February 2, 2014
At the very least probably footer.php and index.php (they're in wp-content/themes/whatever-your-theme-name-is).
posted by bcwinters at 1:22 PM on February 2, 2014
posted by bcwinters at 1:22 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: footer
index
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:32 PM on February 2, 2014
index
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:32 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: Okay so that's weird, flippant. try again, I missed a /
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:45 PM on February 2, 2014
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:45 PM on February 2, 2014
OK, there's nothing weird about your index at all. And your footer is doing what it's supposed to up until <?php wp_footer(); ?> which (based on what parts of the page are duplicated and what parts aren't) is clearly the point where everything goes pear-shaped.
This means it's probably a plug-in that's causing the problem, as that code is what gives plug-ins a hook to add javascript (or other things—possibly messy broken things!) at the bottom of a page.
I would disable all the plug-ins and see if the problem resolves. If it does, turn them back on, one at a time, and see where that gets you.
posted by bcwinters at 1:47 PM on February 2, 2014
This means it's probably a plug-in that's causing the problem, as that code is what gives plug-ins a hook to add javascript (or other things—possibly messy broken things!) at the bottom of a page.
I would disable all the plug-ins and see if the problem resolves. If it does, turn them back on, one at a time, and see where that gets you.
posted by bcwinters at 1:47 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: I've deactivated all four plugins (Jetpack, WP Ultimate Recipe, Akismet, Welcome to Wordpress), and the problem is still occurring.
Halp?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:08 PM on February 2, 2014
Halp?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:08 PM on February 2, 2014
Do you remember exactly what you did when you switched to the static homepage? Maybe index.php and footer.php are not the right files for us to be looking at, if you made a different template page for your blog. It could have a typo in it, or it could be calling something like footer-blog.php or footer-???.php and that could be the problem.
Nothing else jumps out at me as a possibility without having direct access to your entire installation.
posted by bcwinters at 2:24 PM on February 2, 2014
Nothing else jumps out at me as a possibility without having direct access to your entire installation.
posted by bcwinters at 2:24 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: Do you remember exactly what you did when you switched to the static homepage?
I just followed the directions that Wordpress provided. I've tried deleting the 'blog' page and recreating it since installing the required+ theme, and that didn't do anything either.
Nothing else jumps out at me as a possibility without having direct access to your entire installation.
I can add you as a user. I assume you would need Administrator level access to see the whole installation?
(Thanks, by the way. This has been driving me batty.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:29 PM on February 2, 2014
I just followed the directions that Wordpress provided. I've tried deleting the 'blog' page and recreating it since installing the required+ theme, and that didn't do anything either.
Nothing else jumps out at me as a possibility without having direct access to your entire installation.
I can add you as a user. I assume you would need Administrator level access to see the whole installation?
(Thanks, by the way. This has been driving me batty.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:29 PM on February 2, 2014
Yeah, now that I think about it, it's probably home.php and not index.php, and that might be calling a different footer or doing something else entirely. I sent you a direct message in case you are OK with adding me as an admin to take a further look.
posted by bcwinters at 2:40 PM on February 2, 2014
posted by bcwinters at 2:40 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: Replied, bcwinters
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:50 PM on February 2, 2014
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:50 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: OKay so bcwinters has graciously gone through my actual install, and can't find where the problem could be.
Any ideas, anyone? This is making me very frowny.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:29 PM on February 2, 2014
Any ideas, anyone? This is making me very frowny.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:29 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: Oh and I have tried switching to another theme (2014, Wordpress standard, so one assumes it would be fine)... same problem!
So it's not theme-dependent.
It's not plugin-dependent (all have been disabled).
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:31 PM on February 2, 2014
So it's not theme-dependent.
It's not plugin-dependent (all have been disabled).
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:31 PM on February 2, 2014
I have never felt so defeated :(
I mean, at least when it comes to WordPress.
posted by bcwinters at 3:34 PM on February 2, 2014
I mean, at least when it comes to WordPress.
posted by bcwinters at 3:34 PM on February 2, 2014
The link in your question goes to http://www.danielgadsby.ca/blog/ but then automatically redirects to your home page (http://danielgadsby.ca/) after showing a white screen saying
posted by humph at 3:43 PM on February 2, 2014
Sorry, that page doesn't seem to exist. Please try again.If you look at the source (ctrl + u or cmd + u) of that redirect page you'll see that it's not in the html5 of the required+ theme.
!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"So I'm wondering where that comes from? Have you maybe added Page templates to the theme?
posted by humph at 3:43 PM on February 2, 2014
The link in your question goes to http://www.danielgadsby.ca/blog/ but then automatically redirects to your home page (http://danielgadsby.ca/)
I don't get a redirect at all. I get the page duplicated something like this: page opening tags, header, content, footer, that "Sorry" error message (which isn't an error in the version of WP I use, although I'm a version or two behind in my local dev copy), page opening tags again, header, content, footer, page closing tags.
Because we get all the way through the footer without the page closing tags (which are part of WP's footer.php) it seems to me like something is getting borked when WP calls its footer routines.
This could be because of something that was customized on the site outside of the theme (your footer_menu footer links? They looked pretty ordinary when I was logged into the site though), your htaccess file could be borked (unlikely, since usually this would just lead to blank pages or just error messages with no WP rendering at all), your WordPress install could be borked (bleh GOOD LUCK), or it could be file/folder permissions on your server causing something to misfire.
posted by bcwinters at 4:03 PM on February 2, 2014
I don't get a redirect at all. I get the page duplicated something like this: page opening tags, header, content, footer, that "Sorry" error message (which isn't an error in the version of WP I use, although I'm a version or two behind in my local dev copy), page opening tags again, header, content, footer, page closing tags.
Because we get all the way through the footer without the page closing tags (which are part of WP's footer.php) it seems to me like something is getting borked when WP calls its footer routines.
This could be because of something that was customized on the site outside of the theme (your footer_menu footer links? They looked pretty ordinary when I was logged into the site though), your htaccess file could be borked (unlikely, since usually this would just lead to blank pages or just error messages with no WP rendering at all), your WordPress install could be borked (bleh GOOD LUCK), or it could be file/folder permissions on your server causing something to misfire.
posted by bcwinters at 4:03 PM on February 2, 2014
I see that error message ("Sorry, that page doesn't seem to exist. Please try again.", with a link to your domain's home page) when I visit http://www.danielgadsby.ca/blog/ . But if I leave off the www, it resolves nicely and I see all of your posts display at http://danielgadsby.ca/blog/ .
posted by lgandme0717 at 5:42 PM on February 2, 2014
posted by lgandme0717 at 5:42 PM on February 2, 2014
Latest Chrome: Using "www" redirects nicely and gives the page with no duplication.
Latest Firefox: Using "www" gives me the error message. If I leave off "www", Firefox serves it up perfectly with no duplicated content.
IE 11: Using "www" gives me the error message. If I leave off "www", THIS is where I finally see duplicated content (with the error message sandwiched in between), which is weird, because it's usually the most forgiving on syntax errors.
Because I'm the impatient sort, this is where I'd export my site, create a new WP install with no plugins and the default template, then import my content.
posted by maudlin at 6:37 PM on February 2, 2014
Latest Firefox: Using "www" gives me the error message. If I leave off "www", Firefox serves it up perfectly with no duplicated content.
IE 11: Using "www" gives me the error message. If I leave off "www", THIS is where I finally see duplicated content (with the error message sandwiched in between), which is weird, because it's usually the most forgiving on syntax errors.
Because I'm the impatient sort, this is where I'd export my site, create a new WP install with no plugins and the default template, then import my content.
posted by maudlin at 6:37 PM on February 2, 2014
I would take a look at the files for this template and see what triggers that error message ("Sorry, that page doesn't seem to exist. Please try again."). It's not the 404 message that you get if you enter, say, the URL for a made-up page at your domain. So I think there's something off or conflicting with generating the URL for the blog page and maybe your .htaccess file? Have you tried just resetting permalinks and seeing if that helps?
posted by lgandme0717 at 6:51 PM on February 2, 2014
posted by lgandme0717 at 6:51 PM on February 2, 2014
Response by poster: Because I'm the impatient sort, this is where I'd export my site, create a new WP install with no plugins and the default template, then import my content.
This is what I am trying now.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:29 AM on February 4, 2014
This is what I am trying now.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:29 AM on February 4, 2014
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posted by bcwinters at 1:11 PM on February 2, 2014