Wordpress problem: I can see all "Pages" except the front page.

March 27, 2019 9:57 AM

My employer's website is hosted on WordPress. One of the links is borked, and I was asked to fix it. I've coded in HTML and used CSS, and can generally google anything else I need for most basics, but I am stumped on this one:

When I log in to our account at WordPress, I click "Pages." It brings up a list of all of our website's pages, with all the available editing choices, except for our homepage (i.e. the page that comes up when you put "companyname.com" into the URL field in your browser). I can't find it. I have clicked every single link. Is it called something else in WordPress? Does it live somewhere else? I chose "View Source" in Chrome but it appears to be nothing but scripts.

What am I doing wrong? Help?

posted by tzikeh to Computers & Internet (24 answers total)

Is the home page actually a Post?
posted by maudlin at 10:00 AM on March 27, 2019

Response by poster: Is the home page actually a Post?

Here is where I reveal my WordPress ignorance:

What?
posted by tzikeh at 10:11 AM on March 27, 2019

Log into WordPress, click on "Appearance" on the left menu, then select "Customize". On the next page on the left menu click "Homepage Settings".
posted by gregr at 10:13 AM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

It's in the theme then.

Go to Settings >> Reading

What are the settings under "Your homepage displays"
posted by humboldt32 at 10:13 AM on March 27, 2019

Can you see what's set as your "Front Page", then go looking for that?

WordPress Support: Set a Static “Home” Page (Front Page)

Codex: Creating a Static Front Page
posted by yuwtze at 10:13 AM on March 27, 2019

I've used a Wordpress theme in the past that handled the home page as a completely separate entity. There was a completely different set of options driven by the theme that sat under the regular menu on the left and you could edit the home page from one of those links. Any idea which theme you're using?
posted by thejanna at 10:13 AM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

This depends very strongly on your theme. It could be that there's no editable content on your home page, and it is hard-coded in the theme files. Check if you have front-page.php in your theme files (Appearance → Editor)
posted by Gordafarin at 10:17 AM on March 27, 2019 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: It's a Facebook icon that links to our Facebook but the link got borked. It seems like everyone here has a different possible solution! I'll try them all - and if anyone has more ideas, please feel free to post a comment. I'll post a comment letting you know when/if I solve it.
posted by tzikeh at 10:22 AM on March 27, 2019

Try these steps:

1 - What is set as my home page?
- In the Dashboard, go to the Settings option in the sidebar at the left and choose Reading.
- Look at Your homepage displays at the top of the page: Which radio button is selected: Your latest posts or A static page?
- If it's Your latest posts, then this means that a Post exists with your home page content.

2 - Where's that Post?
- Go to Posts in the left sidebar and click to reveal one or more Posts, then enter them to see what content they have.
- If your home page content is in one of the Posts, edit the link.
posted by maudlin at 10:25 AM on March 27, 2019

From your recent comment, I would wager that the link is either hard coded in the theme, or there might be somewhere in the theme options that lets you customise your social media links.

WordPress is really customisable, which unfortunately means in this situation it's hard to say for sure where this option is. Depends on the person who made your theme.
posted by Gordafarin at 10:52 AM on March 27, 2019

Response by poster: gregr: Log into WordPress, click on "Appearance" on the left menu, then select "Customize". On the next page on the left menu click "Homepage Settings".

I did that and the main page came up! Yay! But when I click the social media icons I get a circle with a line through it next to my mouse. What is my next step?

If it's preferable to mods that I take this to MeMail, I will, but this might be useful to others at some point, so until I'm told to go to MeMail, I will ask questions here (but also try not to threadsit).
posted by tzikeh at 1:23 PM on March 27, 2019

Response by poster: Okay, in the theme editor I found our stylesheet, and it contains this:

.social_media { float: none; margin-bottom: 40px; }
.twitter { background: url(images/social_icons.png) 0px 0px; width: 30px; height: 30px; float: left; margin-left: 0px; }
.facebook { background: url(images/social_icons.png) -40px 0px; width: 30px; height: 30px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; }
.likedin { background: url(images/social_icons.png) -80px 0px; width: 30px; height: 30px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; }
.gplus { background: url(images/social_icons.png) -120px 0px; width: 30px; height: 30px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; }
.youtube { background: url(images/social_icons.png) -160px 0px; width: 30px; height: 30px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; }
.blogger { background: url(images/social_icons.png) -200px 0px; width: 30px; height: 30px; float: left; margin-left: 10px; }

But I don't see the actual URL for our Facebook anywhere. Where would be the next place I look?
posted by tzikeh at 1:30 PM on March 27, 2019

Response by poster: Theme is 320 WP-BOOTSTRAP
posted by tzikeh at 1:44 PM on March 27, 2019

The link won’t be anywhere in the CSS (that’s for styling, not for the content of the pages).

I echo what Gordafarin said above: the link will either be in one of the theme’s files or, more likely, in wherever the theme keeps its options/settings.

It looks like the people who made that theme no longer exist as an entity, and the archive.org version of their site doesn’t have much detail.
posted by fabius at 1:59 PM on March 27, 2019

Response by poster: I echo what Gordafarin said above: the link will either be in one of the theme’s files or, more likely, in wherever the theme keeps its options/settings.

Okay... there seem to be hundreds of the theme's files. The names all look promising, but so far I'm coming up empty.

UGH
posted by tzikeh at 2:12 PM on March 27, 2019

The URLs for these icons should definitely be somewhere in the theme settings, but if all else fails, you can hack it up with CSS! Set the social media icon set that's broken to display:none, then add your own icons somewhere else you can access.

But really, if the theme is super out of date, you probably want to start looking at a new one. Old/out-dated WordPress themes are the devil, for lots of reasons. (You're experiencing one of those reasons now!)
posted by nosila at 2:15 PM on March 27, 2019

Response by poster: The URLs for these icons should definitely be somewhere in the theme settings, but if all else fails, you can hack it up with CSS! Set the social media icon set that's broken to display:none, then add your own icons somewhere else you can access.

This isn't my job - the director just knew that I had website design experience and wanted me to fix this one thing. They are not looking to change ANYTHING on the page. They do not want to look for a new theme. They do not want to use different icons. I have no say in this.

I need a way to search every single stupid theme page .js or .css or .less for "facebook.com" and then go to that page and change it.

So screwed.
posted by tzikeh at 2:18 PM on March 27, 2019

Judging by this old description of the theme there is a “theme options panel”. I would bet the Facebook url is in there somewhere. You need to look for a menu item in WordPress admin that will have been set up by this theme, containing those options. This is much more likely than the url being hard-coded into one of the theme files themselves.
posted by fabius at 2:26 PM on March 27, 2019

Best answer: I think you need to work with someone who knows WP.
posted by humboldt32 at 2:43 PM on March 27, 2019

This might be the theme you’re using , and that readme says:

We've removed the custom theme options panel in version 3.0. Currently working on moving all of the options that used to appear there over to the theme customizer.

So, it’s possible these options are there, under Appearance > Cutomize. You said you tried this, and saw your home page but couldn’t click the Facebook icon. That view of your site is a preview of how it looks. In the customiser there should be a menu of things to change, which varies depending on the theme. Investigate those. More info here.
posted by fabius at 2:43 PM on March 27, 2019

Response by poster: If anyone who knows WordPress is willing to help me out with this a little, please send a MeMail.

Thanks, all. I'll report back when there's something to report.
posted by tzikeh at 6:11 PM on March 27, 2019

So when you're logged in and in wp-admin, in the WordPress admin navigation menu at left, do you see an option for Settings near the bottom of the list? And if so, if you click through all the sections of Settings available to you, do you find options to customize social icons? That's one place it could live.

Alternately, it seems possible that if your site's administrator added social icons using a plugin, such as Jetpack, you would need to configure them in that plugin's settings. Do you see a left navigation option for Plugins?

If not, there are a few possibilities. It's possible that social icons aren't set up using that particular plugin (in which case, there might be another one you might need to investigate). Or it's possible that your site has no plugins installed (in which case, perhaps someone might need to edit hard-coded social icons in the theme files). Or you may have a user role that has fewer privileges/less access than an administrator account might (in which case, it's entirely possible that there are options for customizing the site with customizer, tweaking a plugin's settings, or otherwise adjusting settings via the settings menu that you just can't access).

Do you know whether your account is an administrator account? Depending on how whoever built out your site configured roles, that may make a difference. It's possible one of the above options is available, but you currently just can't access it. Is there anyone else in your organization who might have a higher user role than you do whose account you could log in under?

Those are a few things you should look into, and let us know more once you find out!
posted by limeonaire at 8:17 PM on March 27, 2019

Response by poster: FOUND IT!

Multitudinous thanks to gregr, who generously gave up 15 minutes of his time to Skype with a semi-nerd in Chicago so I could show him the code!

For those who want to know where I finally found it, log in to your WordPress dashboard and scroll alllllll the way down on the left column to "site_option," which is the world's stupidest name for the page where you enter all of your social media addresses.

YAY!
posted by tzikeh at 2:20 PM on April 5, 2019 [1 favorite]

Brilliant, I’m glad you (and gregr) found the solution! I guess that “site_option” comes from a plugin or theme?
posted by fabius at 5:35 AM on April 6, 2019