10 Common WordPress Theme Issues & How To Fix Them
There are thousands of forum posts opened everyday not only on WordPress.org but also on other forums and of course nearly every theme developer’s support site regarding very common issues that can be solved very quickly and easily. I’m sure theme developers and community members are pretty bored of answering these questions over and over again, so I’ve decided to write the following post which addresses some of the most common WordPress theme issues so you can bookmark it and have it ready at your disposal.
1. Stylesheet Is Missing
You’ve just downloaded or purchased a super awesome theme and you go to install it and see the lovely message below:
Well your first thought might be…
“the developer screwed me and gave me a theme without a stylesheet”
Of course it is possible the zip file you received didn’t have a style.css file, but more likely the issue is you didn’t upload the root theme folder.
Missing Stylesheet Error Solution
Locate the folder you have of the theme on your desktop and open it (if it is zipped, unzip and open it). Now when you open it you should see all your files in there, if not the theme is likely in a sub-directory. For example our premium themes all have the theme inside an “Installable Theme” folder. Generally it’s somewhere obvious and the actual theme folder will likely be named the same as the theme. Once found zip it and upload via WordPress or upload the unzipped folder via FTP.
2. Sample Data Import Errors
You’ve got your theme installed and now you are uploading a sample .xml file the theme developer was so nice to provide you with and yet again you get an error!
Failed to Import Error Solution 1
The “failed” to import error is usually 1 of 2 things. The first is that it could be trying to load posts or taxonomies from custom post types that do not exist yet.
- Activate Theme: Make sure the theme you are going to use is active.
- Double Check Theme: Make sure the theme actually includes these custom post types and taxonomies – maybe ask the developer or if you know how look yourself
Failed to Import Error Solution 2
For errors that show “Failed to import Media” the images aren’t being downloaded.
- Did you check the box to import attachments? Before running the import did you you need to check the box that reads “download and import file attachments”.
- Are the images accessible? It’s possible the mages aren’t accessible from the server. You could open the sample data in a text editor and try and locate one of those files and test the link in your browser. But the easiest is probably to contact the theme developer and let them know that the images aren’t downloading.
3. Homepage Doesn’t Look Like The Demo
It would be great if any theme you activated looked exactly like the demo once it was activated? Our Total WordPress theme does this when you use the built-in demo importer, but not every theme can be as awesome as Total.
So if you’ve installed a theme (and it’s sample data) but your site isn’t matching up to the theme demo there are a couple very common reasons why your homepage might look different.
Homepage Display Error Solution 1
Reading settings are wrong. This means your theme either does or doesn’t require a home page to be set, and you have your site set to the opposite. So go to Settings > Reading and check the options under “Front Page Displays.”
If your theme doesn’t require any page template for the homepage layout make sure this option is set to”Your latest posts.” If your theme does use a homepage template, have your site set to use a static homepage.
Homepage Display Error Solution 2
You need to use a homepage template. A lot of theme developers use custom page templates for their homepage layouts. So you should first of course read the documentation files, but if there aren’t any head over and create a new page, while in the editor under Page Attributes > Template check to see if there is a Home, Homepage, Frontpage or similar template. If so, then you likely need to create a page using this template, save/publish it, then head over to Settings > Reading to set it as your static front page option.
4. My URL’s Are “Ugly”
By default the default WordPress url structure isn’t very “pretty” much less SEO-Friendly. So when you first setup your website URLS might look ugly (a mish-mash of the post ID, publish date, post title and even the category). Don’t worry – it’s easy to fix.
Ugly URLs Error Solution
So if your urls aren’t looking that great (yourwebsite.com/?p=1) simply go to Settings > Permalinks and change your setting to the “Post Name” option (or any of the others – just choose the one that best works for you).
5. My Posts Are Returning 404 Errors
If you have posts that are now returning a 404 error page, don’t panic (yet) most of the time your posts are still there and you just need to update your permalink settings to fix the issue. This is very common with themes that use custom post types. Whenever you activate a new theme that uses custom post types you should reset your permalink settings.
Posts Showing 404 Error Solution
The simplest fix is to just go to Settings > Permalinks and click the save button. Usually this will do the trick. But if this doesn’t work you might have to update your .htaccess file manually (note: we do not recommend tackling this on your own if you’re brand new to WordPress, instead you might need to contact a freelance developer for assistance). You can read more about using WordPress permalinks in the WordPress codex.
6. My Menu Is Blank
For those who use WordPress on a daily basis you will likely not have this issue, but if you are very new to WordPress or you used WordPress a few years ago and just getting back it you might be confused as to why your menu is blank when you install the theme.
Missing Menu Error Solution
The default WordPress theme has a fallback for the WordPress menu in case there isn’t any setup, however, not all theme developers have added this to their own themes.
To make sure your menus are working, head over to Appearance > Menu to setup your menu.
- Make sure you have a menu. If you don’t, you’ll need to create one (checkout this post to learn how to setup menus in WordPress)
- Make sure the menu is assigned to a location. Below your menu you should see “Display Locations” – these are the menu areas built into your theme. Some themes may only have one main menu location, others might have tons of locations. Just be sure to check the option for where you want your menu to appear then save.
7. New Theme Uses Featured Images But I Have a Ton Of Posts Without Them
Prior to WordPress 2.9 there wasn’t featured image (post thumbnails) support in WordPress so many themes used meta options or custom fields for defining featured images or they didn’t have any sort of default post image.
So maybe you are switching from an older theme to a new one that does support featured images or maybe your prior theme was just very minimal and didn’t use them. We’ll you aren’t going to take hours to go through your hundreds of posts to set the featured image (or maybe you are) so there is a quick solution for this and it comes in the form of a plugin!
No Featured Images Error Solution
A simple solution is to use the “Easy Add Thumbnail” plugin to automatically set featured images on old posts. Just install, activate and follow the instructions to add images to old posts. Going forward, just remember to add your featured images when you publish new posts.
8. Slides, Accordions, Toggles, Tabs…Not or Stopped Working!
A lot of WordPress themes these days make use of java-script/jQuery to enhance the themes adding things such as image sliders, toggles, accordions, tabs, mobile menus, image hovers…etc.
If the these features are not working on your theme or suddenly stopped working its most likely do to some sort of javascript error causing everything to break.
Broken Slides, Toggles, Tabs, etc Error Solution
The first thing you should do is disable all your plugins, clear your cache (all of them) and re-load your site to check if everything is working how it should be. If it is, then now you can activate your plugins back 1 by 1 and as soon as it breaks you’ll know that last plugin was the one causing issues (make note of this plugin, deactivate then keep doing the same).
Once you know which plugin/plugins are causing the issue you can either search for new plugin with the same functionality that is compatible, or you can contact the plugin or theme developer to let them know of the conflict (first inspect the page to see what the actual issues are so you can contact the appropriate person – if its a plugin error send a note the plugin dev, or if its a theme error the theme dev).
9. Styling Changes Aren’t Doing Anything
So you have your theme all setup and now you want to change the way it looks to give it more of your own “personality” and really make it match your brand, business, niche…etc. So you’ve started adding some custom CSS to your site or modifying the stylesheet but whenever you refresh your site none of your changes are taking affect!
Missing Style Edits Error Solution
There are a few steps you can take to ensure your edits are applied:
- Disable Cache: The most common issue is that you have some sort of caching plugin such as W3 Total Cache installed and caching your CSS. If you do, you should disable it.
- WordPress Customizer: If using the theme customizer you should try clicking the save button then refreshing the page to see if your changes take affect.
- Background not changing: If you are simply trying to change the background using the WordPress background dashboard you might be having issues if the theme you are using has an image set for the background. Try uploading a new image just to test because that should override it. Uploading a 1px solid color and setting it to repeat might be a decent option as well.
- WordPress Editor Changes: If you are trying to make changes via the WordPress editor at Appearance > Editor the changes might not actually be saving due to server permissions, but if this is the case you will receive an error. You can learn more about setting file permissions here.
10. I’ve Updated My Theme And All My Changes Are Gone!
The most likely cause of this error is that you made manual changes to your template files such as the style.css file (usually). Then when you updated your theme your edited files were overwritten by the default theme code. This is why we NEVER recommend making changes to original theme.
Theme Changes Are Gone Error Solution
Unfortunately your edits may be gone forever unless you have a backup of your website that you can use to restore it. Some hosting companies offer 30-days worth of website backups, so try contacting your host if you need help locating and/or reverting to a backup. If you have your own manual backup, you should be able to restore your theme files via FTP.
While you might not be able to fix this issue presently you can take precautions to be sure you’re not in this situation again. In the future, when you want to make edits to your themes you should be using one (or more) of the following:
- Custom CSS Plugin. If you only need a few small tweaks you could use a custom CSS plugin to make your tweaks and ensure they aren’t deleted during a theme update. Here are a two we like:
- Create A Child Theme. Creating a child theme is probably the best method of customizing your theme and will allow the greatest flexibility and even allow you to edit template files (besides just style.css), remove or add new scripts as well as add custom functions.
- Checkout this article to learn how to create a WordPress child theme.
- Maintain Full Website Backups. In case something goes wrong it’s always a good idea to keep backups of your website. For this we highly recommend you backup your WordPress website (which is different from the server backups your hosting company might offer) using one of the following:
- Keep A Changelog. Whether you are editing the template files manually (best no to) or using a child theme, creating a changelog is the best way for you to keep track of all the tweaks you’ve made to the theme. It’s especially useful if something breaks so you can back-track and see where you might have made a mistake.
Wrapping Up
There you have it – 10 common WordPress errors plus solutions so you can fix them. But these are just a few of the errors we see folks run into most often. For more tips you should also have a look at this guide we wrote on how to install your Themeforest WordPress theme (though the guide has tips that would apply to most themes).
If you’re having other issues your first step should be to do a quick Google search to see if you can find an answer yourself. If after researching on your own you still can’t find an answer, try contacting the theme or plugin author (if it’s an issue with their product) or visit a forum like Reddit or Envato to see if a community member can help. Chances are the error you’re getting is more common than you think!
Wonderful post. Will be sharing this big time.
Thanks! I will be as well 😉
Can anybody tell me why my ‘save’ button sometimes vanishes and yet when it appears and i use it my work simply vanishes. All that remains is the title.The same thing when I publish, I have tried to publish a dozen times and my post has simply vanished each time, not even a revision is left behind.
Hi there. That is VERY weird. I have been working with WordPress developing themes and plugins for 10 years now and never seen this. I would recommend first de-activating all themes and plugins and see if you still have the issue. If you do go to Dashboard > Updates and click the re-install button. Than clear all site and browser cache. If it still hasn’t been fixed maybe ask your webhost because it could be an internal issue (unlikely but possible).
Thank you so much bro. i spent almost 5 nights trying to set up my static front page. but now i found every thing is okey. Thanks again bro
Any suggestions for this issue?
WordPress says ‘All themes are up to date’ but my theme is not up to date therefore I can’t install the latest version. My site is broken because the developer says I need the lastest version but I am stuck because WordPress says all themes up to date. Ever heard of this? I could give you my login and tip you in bitcoin if you can figure it out. My site has been down for 13 months because of this and the developer offers no support once you pay for the theme.
It sounds like you are using a premium theme that isn’t hosted on WordPress.org and the updates aren’t being provided by the theme via the dashboard so you may have to update it manually via FTP. Did you ask the developer how to properly update your theme or does it mention it in the documentation? If you did purchase this theme they should help you with the update. I sell premium themes myself such as the very popular “Total theme “and if a customer has an issue updating their site we usually will do it for them.
Great. Here is my issue. I just finished installing a wplms theme. I have all the components of my newly installed theme on my wp admin area. When i visit my website it doesn’t displayanything. What might be the issue. Thanks
Hmm – I’m not sure. WPLMS is a premium theme that you paid for, I would suggest reaching out to the developer. If you open a support ticket they should be able to help!
Very nice tutorial,information useful for anyone using wordpress…
I hope that this post can at least solve a few peoples issues before they pull their hair out or smash their computer.
Hi AJ,
Thank you so much for all that you do. I’m using the Workz theme for a new public school I’m looking to open, and I can’t seem to find the code to have the titles of the portfolio thumbnails on the bottom of the main index to be permanently overlaid as opposed to only coming up when you hover. I’m sorry to ask for personal support, but I’ve been working on this issue for days and I’m going crazy. It’s here: gothamhybrid.org
Thanks!
Remove the javascript at js/custom.js under the “//Portfolio” heading.
Hi there
thanks for sharing this post, it’s useful to read this information to find out possible to solutions to problems.
I’ve recently added a section to my website which details a couple of Jquery related issues that I solved on a clients website recently.
(I’ll continue adding to my page as I come across other issues on clients sites that I solve)
Thanks again for sharing these tips
What a great post! I found at least two things in here I need to explore. One is the featured image. Never figured out quite what it was so I’ve not used it. Frankly I still can’t understand the purpose of a “featured image” and a “thumbnail”. They aren’t the same size. So obviously the use is not exactly the same.
I also like the post by David Tiong above. I’ve thought of adding such a page to my site if for no other than reason to compile a list of articles/posts that have been helpful. My site is focused on genealogy. I don’t know if doing so would be an appropriate action or not.
Have a read on WordPress.org about Featured Images. The “thumbnail” as you mention is just a default cropping size that can be used to insert to a post but can also be used as the “featured image”. Featured images are outside of the “post content” and they are added by the theme’s template files and you can set any size for the featured image as well as unlimited amount of sizes to be used. It’s a bit tricky to explain.
Thanks L. Peach for your kind words.
I don’t see any reason why having such a page on your blog wouldn’t be a good idea. You wouldn’t make it prominent of course, as it’s outside of your target audience, however a list page dedicated to resources that you have found useful, categorised under appropriate subheadings, would be always available to you when you need it.
Buffered! Nice collection of tips. It would be good to have a master list of this type of thing to send newbies to! I get tons of these questions all the time.
Should I use a caching plugin with my WordPress Multisite? I use it in drupal but I’ve never really used it on a production wordpress site… Advice?
It’s really up to you. I personally don’t use a caching plugin because I’m using CloudFlare.
This is a great post with some common issues. Although, I’d argue the following are not or should not be theme issues at all.
#1 – Theme developers should properly ZIP up their theme folders (‘theme-name.zip’ should only include the ‘theme-name’ folder which houses the theme files). Of course, they don’t have this option at places like ThemeForest, which is why this “issue” is posted on the TF forums almost daily.
#2a – Theme authors should not be putting custom post types and taxonomies in themes. This is plugin territory and should not be relevant to this article.
#4 – Not sure what his has to do with themes. This is more of a general WordPress issue.
#5 – Again, if theme authors wouldn’t put custom post types and taxonomies in their themes, this wouldn’t be a theme problem.
#1 – I Totally agree! But like you said, on ThemeForest for example you don’t get the choice ;(
#2 – I also agree and I have been doing this, but even still, when you activate a plugin that has custom post types you should still re-save your permalinks. And also there are still tons of themes out there with post types built-in as well as I haven’t been able to go through and update all my free themes yet to use the plugins.
#4 – Sure it is a general issue, but I still get asked often times by WordPress beginners. Some people still starting out might not understand that it isn’t the theme itself which is controlling the permalinks.
$5 – See response #2
Thanks for stopping by Justin!
Hi. I agree with you Justin. Most of us trying to do blogging has no dev background or is limited. Dev’s should really think about those people trying out a theme to blog. And its frustrating to pop out so much money for a theme and than getting stuck…like literally when you’re about to customize your theme.
Nice summary of issues, I have come across quite a few of these on clients projects in the past, a few you will learn to check / amend as second nature.
Awesome! I really like this. keep up with the good work. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Ahh this is the reason why we constantly have wordpress problems – thanks for the quick fixes!
I am struggeling right now with what i think is a common issue. I use the theme portfolio functions not for portfolio purposes. My client adds pictures of houses instead. The problem is: the permalink will be myurl.com/portfolio/nameofthehouse/. The fix wil should be -> myurl.com/estate/nameofthehouse/. I have tried a rewrite in taxonomies.php but it didn’t solve this problem.
It depends how the custom post type is setup on your site. The register_post_type() has a rewrite parameter which you can use to define the slug for the post type. Have a look at the parameters – if you are lucky your register_post_type() function has a filter so you can alter the slug with a custom function.
Awesome, thanks for the quick response :-). I’m using Pytheas as theme. Does this theme have this filter?
Unfortunately no, I haven’t updated my free themes yet – they will soon run on plugins for the post types and have the filter. For now you can have a look at functions/post_types.php
Ok thanks for your answer
‘My Posts Are Returning 404 Errors’
Thanks AJ that’s saved me as I was getting 404 errors in the Portfolio.
Colin
Just bought a Theme Forest theme (Spacecowboy). Applied all your tricks, thanks for the tips but to no avail.
I have found that some developers use their customers as beta testers. I’m in the process of finding all the theme bugs and attempting to have a developer in Europe fix them as I find them, meanwhile I’ve got to meet with MY client and explain the delays.
There’s z-index/non-repeating/centered small images with the background images, issues, the slider doesn’t integrate as a widget or shortcode and others. Basically, bad code.
You’re a solid developer. I’m surprised Theme Forest doesn’t require more beta testing. You know the process. Why aren’t these bugs discovered before themes go to market (not just Theme Forest)? This is super basic customization.
Sorry you are having issues. Sometimes a theme might break on an update also ThemeForest themes tend to be really huge so sometimes there are bugs, have you tried contacting the developer. I personally fix bugs on my premium themes at least within 48 hours from which they are reported. I’m sure the developer doesn’t want to be providing a “broken” product to his/her customer, maybe they can assist you?
Hi AJ,
I know you don’t provide support for the free themes, and I’ve gotten pretty good at deciphering CSS code but I can’t figure out why this is happening and I thought you might have a quick fix. I’m using the bodega theme and I want to change the text “Recent Work” to like Photo Gallery, for example, but when I make the change in the index.php file, it doesn’t save. In fact, it redirects me to my homepage. Do you have an idea offhand what might be happening? Thanks much!
Try making your edits in the file locally then update via FTP. There might be an issue with the editing via the theme editor on your site.
Thanks much! I can do that 🙂
First time commenter….
Thanks for this post, it is helpful and I can already see a few tweaks I can implement to improve my site.
I have a semi-related question: I’ve purchased a number of premium themes from various vendors online. In many cases however the support is lacking and the ability to customize of few items tends to always be not within the purchase agreement (understandably.) The answer to change premium themes is invariably to “hire a developer.”
So, where does one find a trusted and proven WordPress developer willing to optimize someone else’s theme?
Goggleing premium theme developer or customization has been fruitless.
I imagine there are others like me who can manage most of the ins-and-outs of browser CMS systems, but not necessarily able to code against them.
Perhaps it could be a blog post in itself?
Hi Paul,
Yes when you purchase a theme you are purchasing the theme itself and it’s usually very cheap. You aren’t actually purchasing web development services. As you mentioned it’s perfectly understandable. And as a seller with over 9,000 customers I could only imagine if I provided customization help (which I do for some small things) it would consume more time/resources then the money made on the actual sales.
I’ve partnered with Tweaky and they handle a lot of my customers customizations.
Thanks AJ! I appreciate the quick response and recommendation.
This post resolves many issues of mine..Thank AJ for this wonderful and informative Post –
Hi AJ, I am a newbie struggling with your awesome Complete Theme.
And I am stuck exactly at #3 ! 🙁
Is there any way I could get dummy data so that my theme looks EXACTLY like the demo?
Would appreciate all help.
Thanks.
Unfortunately the Completely theme is going to be retired actually next month. We are doing a giant overhaul to our themes. Providing Sample Data to thousands of users puts a huge stress on our server which is why we don’t do it. If I were you check under Settings->Reading and make sure it’s set to show “your latest posts”.
Thank you for your prompt reply AJ. Would it be possible as a special case to share the sample data for this ONE theme for me?
Separately, you could always host the sample data on other public servers such as dropbox, rapidshare, etc. This would not put any stress on your servers.
This would be a great boon for newbies (like me) who take their first tottering steps into the world of WordPress and get overwhelmed.
To be completely honest with you, my intention of using your Complete Theme was to start updating content rather than struggle with configuration. This theme was closest to what I wanted hence I chose this one.
I would really appreciate if you could share the sample data for this one.
Once again, thank you for making such amazing themes free for public. Best wishes for your endeavors in life!
If you are a current customer of mine I wouldn’t mind if you open up a ticket . I will send you the sample data. Yes setting up the sample data elsewhere such as Amazon S3 would be a good idea, but would first have to create sample data files for all the themes, then edit each one to change the location of all media files to point to a dummy image hosted elsewhere. This is time consuming… We are starting to go through all our themes. We are retiring many and updating all of the ones we are keeping. Including sample data as you mention is something we will most likely due in the future – good idea 😉
Hi, I am using the Adapt theme (like it a lot) and tried to translate it using the “CodeStyling Localization” plugin. The plugin saved the new .mo and .po files (de_DE) in the Adapt/lang/ folder, but the theme does not use them (I also changed the language in the wp-config.php to de_DE).
Can you help me resolve this issue? Thank you.
I think this was an issue in a previous version. Make sure the text_domain is set in functions.php – http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/load_textdomain
Most of the time I faced CSS stylesheet missing and sometimes Pluggable.php error too.
Thank you for the easy add plugin. My featured images were not working even after hours of playing with code and trawling for help on forums. This plugin sorted it out in seconds.
Thanks again.
Hi,
I’m using free Thoughts theme. It’s great, but today I found that slider has been broken. I tried to use your advise and disabled all plugins – but nothing changed. I also have no cache plugin.
Last plugin that I installed was Livejournal crossposter, but I checked it yesterday and everything was OK with this plugin installed! And today I discovered that in new post slider is broken either on main page or post inln.me/blog/progulki-po-moskve/. And older post (which was made when everything was fine) has no slider on the main page but do has on post inln.me/all_about_photo/utro-v-sokolnikah/
I’m totally frustrated. I like this theme very much and don’t want to change it. It’s OK for me to do some donation (or buy these theme, despite the fact it is free). But I really need help.
Could you please help me?
You don’t have any attachments. Make sure you’re correctly attaching the images
Hi Clark, I’m using the Thoughts theme with BuddyPress and I seem to have lost my Appearance>Widget. I looked up a few ways to fix that and I found that I can restore my Widget option by searching the theme’s functions.php file and changing the edit_themes cap to edit_themes_options but I can’t locate my edit_themes cap. I’m not sure if this post is going to fall in the endless pit of unnoticed comments of the internet but figured I would try.
I’ve never experienced this issue myself. My guess is there is some sort of PHP error preventing the page from showing. Have you tried enabling WP_Debug? There wouldn’t be any edit_themes cap in functions.php. I wouldn’t be able to help with this issue via the comments. Usually these comments do get removed because they just add a bunch of unrelated content to a well written post we want to rank on search results. If you need professional assistance maybe check out freelanceswitch.
yesterday when i refresh my tungstenation theme all css gone. i dont know why. please help
Do you mean you custom CSS? If you made edits to your theme and then updated it, they will all be gone. You should use a child theme or custom CSS plugin for making edits to your parent theme design.
Why would when downloading a theme that instead of downloading under themes it has placed itself in WordPress media?
I have never heard of this…it really makes no sense. Are you sure this is really what is going on? If so, you might have to re-install your WP installation or do some further research, to be honest I’m not sure its even possible!
Hi, I had a question. I’m using Elegant Themes photo gallery in my WP site. But the images seem to be off center. How is there a way to fix this? I’ve tried playing with the size ratios and no luck. Have you heard of this problem before? Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.
JM
Elegant Themes includes support, you should open a support request through their site.
Hi AJ.
First of all – thnx a lot for sharing Bodega theme with us. I have only a few months of experience with WP, but this one was quite easy to make basic customization on.
Could you please point me to support for Bodega? I needed to find a way to add larger HP Slide images (without them being automatically cropped), and was not able to find any post about it, or an email for support.
Thnx in advance
Eric
Hi Eric, glad you like the theme.
Currently I don’t offer support for this theme. I am slowly updating the themes and fixing bugs and will be providing support for them as they will be available on Creative Market, so far I’ve done 4 theme, I hope to get this theme updated and available with support soon!
Thnx for the fast reply!
Those 4 look quite interesting. I might switch my current work to one of them. Did I understand you right that on these you already do offer support?
Correct. Any themes I am selling on Creative market or on ThemeForest include support for theme issues and bugs. Eventually all my free themes will be available with added support and sample data 😉
Thanks for this article, very useful.
I have a question about the fantastic Thoughts theme, though. I’m sorry to contact you this way but I couldn’t find any forum.
After upgrading to Wp 3.6 the menu has changed: in my case 2 menus (the origional and a grey dropdown) are being displayed on ipad landscape and bigger and on smaller screens the text menu with the clickable icon have been replaced by the grey dropdown.
I really like this theme and would love to use it as it was intended, will there be an update on your theme?
Thank you,
Nick
You have jQuery errors. Disable your plugins to find the one causing the issue. The theme itself is well coded and should work just fine on 3.6. Whenever you have an issue you should always de-activate your plugins 1 by 1 before trying to seek support from the theme developer. Most often then ever its a plugin.
🙂 LOL I’m sorry man I understand we’re all busy! I had no plugins activated thats why I asked.. Your reply forced me to think further and realised that there were some in mu-plugins, turns out use google librairies was not up to date.
Thanks for your help and a great theme A.J.
(As long as we’re chatting: is there any reason why a standard childtheme shouldn’t work on Thoughts?)
Ya that would be it 😉 As long as your server is fast, I see no reason to load the Google libraries instead of the WordPress hosted jQuery though. Or especially is using a CDN. Child theme should work just fine.
Hi, I’ve tried to activate several themes but once I log out my site thekaddu.com only shows the default responsive theme. Please help.
Are you sure your site is not cached?
Hi, any plugin that I try to use I keep getting errors. I purchase a theme from themeforest but unfortunately I am getting no where as far as fixing the errors.
Contact the author of the theme you purchased, they should provide support with their theme. If the theme has a lot of issues and PHP errors you might be able to request a refund from ThemeForest, but contact the author first, he might be able to fix them for you.
Hi AJ,
I hired a web designer and all seemed perfect until it was uploaded on my domain. Each time he uploads the site goes offline and my host (justhost) says the theme is broken/faulty but the web guy doesn’t seem to understand what that means, he keeps saying the theme is working fine on his own side as I can see on the demo he provided. Each time i contact support, they change the theme from their end just to let me know they’re not the issue, right now they chose a white theme but it has given my site a different look entirely, no images, nothing. What can I do pls, it’s been really frustrating.
A blank page usually means there is some sort of PHP error. Enable WP_Debug and then let your designer know what the error is
Very useful article, thank you! But I am still struggling to understand why the filterable portfolio is not working on the adapt theme I am using. Categories won’t show at all! What can I do?
We offer this theme with support, you can buy the theme on Creative Market if you want some help.
Portfolio pages of fantastic Bodega wp theme not open in WP3.6
I get message: Sorry, the page you were looking for could not be found?
Do you know that problem and do you have suggestion how to fix?
Everything else works fine.
Re-save your permalinks.
Any idea how I work around a theme that forces me to upload a file when I already have it on the media library? The theme doesn’t give me an option to use the media library, only to upload a new file and I have tons of repeated files, having to upload the same ones over and over again.
Depends. It sounds like your theme works with image “attachments” which unfortunately in WordPress an file can only be attached to 1 post at a time. I don’t see any situation though where you would need the same files across tons of different posts, seems like duplicate content, no?
With the theme Pytheas enabled, in use for over a year, now every time I need to edit the section Portfolio or Service, to edit an item in the text box in WordPress the cursor disappears, not allowing you to update any information.
It seems to be something related to Shortcode plugin in newest version of Pytheas, you can not disable this plugin.
What is happening can? (Already tested in browsers IE, Firefox and Chrome).
Yes, this is a known issue. Just update the shortcodes plugin
Thanks!
The import fail always bored me 🙁
tips your are given really helpful these are the something which always mesup to those who are new on WordPress im appreciate your work well done
a million kisses where ever you want! Re 5. 404 errors. So simple, reset permalinks! BRavo!
Thank you soo much for this best regards.
Great information..thanks alot for sharing this wp fix
Hi AJ Clarke,
you are really boss for wp,
i had this problems in my site,
now the problems is solve,
tks for sharing, it’s a cool!!
Hi,
I have a question for ya.
I messed up with a theme settings. So I deleted the theme and reinstalled it thinking I would be getting a fresh copy of theme but after reinstalling, I found that old settings still persist – lol – I don’t know what to do.
Any help?
Theme options are stored in the database, the only way to remove them is if your theme panel has a reset button or if you remove the entries from your database.
May be I have 11th issue. Trying to move to Blogger and I want to keep the same permalinks.
My permalinks are without date stamps and Blogger needs date stamp in them. So I am stumped.
To be honest I’m not quite sure because I’ve never transferred over from blogger. But personally if you don’t have too many url’s I would suggest keeping the pretty WordPress prettylinks without the date stamp (better for SEO).
Hi,
I installed a new theme (wpmp-1376039027-properfect.2.0.0.zip) and everything went WHITE, no wordpress, no site, nothing, do you know about a solution?
Thank you
Enable WP_Debug so you can see what error is being generated.
Hi AJ,
So I have a weird issue. I open my posts tab and all posts–published and scheduled–are there. When I refresh the page I’m missing some published and scheduled posts. Any ideas?
Thanks
This would be very hard to troubleshoot without actually logging in and having a look. Have you tried disabling plugins and/or switching to the default WordPress theme to make sure it isn’t plugin/theme related?
Wow, thank you. I was dealing with problem #3 and was almost crying when I found this! I had to change it to “show latest posts,” even though in this theme it isn’t showing posts at all. And now I am all set. Weird!
All you need to do is open index.php in your theme, then you can see exactly what happens when using “show latest posts” for the homepage 😉
I couldn’t get the Pytheas portfolio/services pages to display with the custom links you described in your video guide…until I stumbled upon this thread. Step #4 resolved my issue (setting it to ‘Post name’). You are a tremendous blessing to the WP community. Keep up the good work!!!
😉
Also just so you know if you don’t have the pretty permalinks then the URL would be your-site.com/?post_type=services – or of course changing services to whatever the post type is you are using.
Easiest explanations I have ever found, bit of a new user and still struggling with some bits. On quick edit, when just adding or changing a category, hitting update causes the title to disappear and the authors name to change to first registered member. Any ideas ?
That is very strange…Have you tried disabling plugins to make sure none is causing the issue? Also make sure your WP install is fully updated to the latest version.
This was a great read. I didn’t know about that thumbnail plugin so thanks for sharing that. 🙂 You wouldn’t happen to know how to fix a theme where the read more tag isn’t working would you? I’m using the Runway theme and I can’t get the darn thing to work. Thanks!
It’s possible the theme is using the_excerpt() function instead of the_content() so the theme displays excerpts no matter what. You would have to edit your theme to get it to work. If this is a premium theme you are using, simply contact the author for support.
Good morning,
Thanks for the post, I tried to follow your directions about my slider and drop down’s not working but even after disabling all plugins and clearing cache, the drop down’s do not work same with the slider.
I am using SM Theme’s SportsBox theme but no one is answering on their forums.
Any other ideas?
I can’t help you out with theme specific issues (I would have to download the theme and test myself which I don’t have time to do for free, sorry). If you are using a premium plugin you should request support, otherwise if you don’t know your way around the code. There are thousands of people out there willing to take your money in exchange for fixing it up.
I deactivated all my plugins, reset and deleted cache and the drop down’s and slider are still not working, they were working fine 3 days ago. I don’t know of anythign else that changed besides a handful of plugins, but they are all deactivated.
Any ideas?
Could be an issue with the theme, you’ll want to reviese the code. If it’s a premium theme you are having issues, simply contact the developer 😉
this just saved my life. and my night sleep.
thanks so so much!
Thanks you so much. I’m new at wordpress and this post is just like a guide for me. Right now I’m facing a problem no 9, “Styling Changes Aren’t Doing Anything”. And I think now I’m gonna solve the problem. Cause I was using W3 Total Cache Plugin. Thanks you very much. But one thing would you like to say me? What is the use of cache plugin.
Caching plugins make your site load faster because WordPress doesn’t need to query the database every time someone loads a page on your site.
one issue:
if we want to set permalinks structure as a randomly generated numeric, so how to do that?
To be honest I’m not sure how you would do this…Maybe there is an answer somewhere on the web, have you tried Googling it?
I really need your help… do you have any ideas about our issue.. we are running out of ideas & don’t have anyone to ask.
We have a blank wp-admin page & can’t access our website – it was working fine all morning, changed plugins & now not working.
This is our first website setup & we are new to wordpress… we looked up deactivating plugins… but we are very basic with computers so we need a more step by step guide.
Please help.
Cheers
Rox
Hi Rox,
Enable WP_Debug so you can see what the error is, that should help you fix it.
Thanks so much for this, AJ – I installed a new theme and the categories were out of whack. I simply saved the permalinks and all is right again. That could have been way more frustrating had I not found this!
Hi AJ, any tips on how to use a changelog within a theme? I would just put a changelog.txt in the root but maybe you know of other (dynamic)ways to achieve this. Hope to here from you.
I make changelogs manually. But I prefer to keep them on a separate page online then in a readme doc, it’s more useful.
AJ,
Im not sure when this happened, our portfolio page was working fine a couple of weeks ago and when I checked in this last week the galleries aren’t opening into the lightbox and the user is unable to navigate between images, only the featured image or the one directly behind it in the compressed album shows up. And navigation is a zero. Its as if my albums only have one image. You noted above that this could be the plug in or the theme. How do I know for sure? Our theme is Striking Multiflex Child.
Do you have any suggestions? I made the page back into a draft and it shouldn’t be available to the public. If you need to take a look I can make it live again.
Cheers,
Katelyn
AUM Framing & Gallery
Hi Katelyn,
Usually lightbox issues are javascript related caused by activating new plugins that have javascript errors. First I would recommend trying to disable any 3rd party plugins and clearing your cache to see if it fixes itself. If that doesn’t work it could be an error in the theme itself and you should contact the developers of the Striking theme so they can look into the issue for you. I just looked at your site and it is working for me though. So either you already fixed it or if you still see issues then simply try clearing your browser cache or testing in a new browser to see if you still have errors.
Hi, I am using WP Sydney theme (free version) on my website and every time I try to change my permalinks to Post Name I get 404 errors. Once I change it back to Plain it’s ok again. Do you know if some WP themes don’t have the ability to use certain permalinks? I would have thought that Post Name would have been a default on the theme to begin with. Very frustrating! Any tips you could offer? Thanks 🙂
This isn’t a theme related issue, this is server related. Most likely your .htaccess file isn’t writable so it’s not updating correctly. Have a look at our post on fixing 404 errors at the first section where it talks about manually updating your .htaccess file. It’s possible you will have to do that. However, you should also be able to simply contact your web host and have them fix the issue for you so that when you do alter things under Settings > Permalinks you don’t have to manually update your .htaccess file.
Thanks AJ. Bookmarked!!! please keep bossing around everything you love about WordPress. #bigThumbs
Here’s another fix!
DO NOT use FOOTER 2 before using FOOTER 1!
Don’t ask how I know, but I do.
😉
My theme is missing my index.php page. So I went and made one which loaded some of the site. But I am not that great with code. So it has loaded my site but there is nothing. I understanding from reading that my index page has not connected with my child theme I think.
Hello sir.
Recently I added the valenti WordPress theme I activetd them but now my admin dash board does’nt open why?
This is a premium theme. You’ll need to ask the theme developer to assist you. If you downloaded the theme illegally your site may have been hacked or injected with code. If you purchased the theme legally then it may just be a small php error or installation error which the theme developer should be able to look into for you.
I hired a guy to build my website – for the last year everything has been fine. I have a car dealership, and inventory is uploaded every night. It adds new vehicles and takes away sold vehicles. Last week it stopped updating. I can not get reach of the guy who built it and all my inventory is old and outdated, but all my other sources have the correct information ( autotrader, cars.com….etc). I contacted the Dealer Management System that sends the ftp file over and they said nothing has changed on there end.
This happened once and the builder said he needed to erase or update the cache. I have no idea how to do that. How do I fix this?
Because this is something custom it’s impossible to know what could be wrong. Unfortunately you will have to hire someone to revise the code and ensure nothing is wrong. It is possible it’s just a caching issue on the server though so I would recommend fist disabling any possible site cache first and keep it disabled for a day or two and see if it starts working again.
Hi, I am newbie and trying to use free theme Shoreditch but homepage Doesn’t Look Like The Demo. I am trying to implement the solution provided on point 3 but not getting “Reading setting” option in setting. Please help.
Thank you in advance.
The Shoreditch theme uses a page template that shows multiple pages as one for the demo homepage. Its a bit different from a normal template, so I’d recommend checking out their Shoreditch documentation to learn more.
Hi – I’m a total novice and started to make a few changes using inspect element and activating a plugin (google fonts). now my site wont load on desktop or mobile and im very nervous ive messed something up. any help so so appreciated!
Well using the inspect element feature on your browser won’t change your website, so my guess would be that it’s the new plugin you’ve installed. It’s possible it conflicts with another plugin or your theme. Try deactivating it to see if that fixes things, and maybe try a different fonts plugin 🙂
Dear Admin, I am using Genesis Dish pro theme, but few of the pages are not opening with the same theme, their layout, the design is showing the previous theme. I am not able to solve this. pls, suggest me what should I do to resolve this. I am pissed off. Thanks in advance
That’s very odd since you should only have the one child theme active (Dish Pro) so any styling should be pulled from that theme. It is possible you have custom CSS on those pages, but if that’s not the case I’d recommend reaching out to the theme developer for support (which in this case would be StudioPress I believe). I hope you can get it figured out!
Thanks for sharing this! I have a problem where the portfolio thumbnail images on the homepage are getting cropped (Elegant Theme). I want them to be square images but the cropping is bugging me. Please help if you can
Hi Rodney,
If you are using an Elegant Theme you should be able to open a support request with them and they can help you correctly set the cropping for your images. As long as the theme is coded correctly you should either have options in the backend to select your custom image sizing arguments and if not you should definitely be able to adjust them via a child theme.
nice blog! this helps us in fixing the Common WordPress Theme Issues.
Hi AJ, great site, very informative. I’m new to WordPress and have just installed it on my domain. I selected the twentyseventeen theme but nothing displays in the preview. When I try to load the site or the preview, it does nothing and the explorer bar keeps flickering (the blue progress line). Any ideas? Any help appreciated!
Thanks,
Alex
Hi Alex, it honestly sounds like WordPress wasn’t installed correctly. If you are new to WordPress I highly recommend choosing a managed WordPress hosting solution built specifically for WordPress only such as Flywheel, Kinsta, WPEngine or Siteground. Sometimes people new to WordPress will get whatever hosting is cheapest and experience all sorts of issues and in many case that hosting service isn’t even meant for WordPress (WordPress is more resource in tensive then a static html site so it has more requirements). If you are using a managed WordPress hosting solution you should be able to reach out to your hosting companies support so they can verify that everything is installed correctly. If you aren’t using any plugins on the site and the default theme isn’t working then you either have a problem with the WP installation or the server.
Hi, beautiful blog. Very helpful. I’ve got one problem: switch my site from one theme to another now it’s all messed up. Seems not compatible plugin or something else….can you help me? Thanks
There are a few things that could go awry when switching themes (which is why we put together this prep guide on how to safely change your theme). It’s possible your old theme and new theme don’t use the same custom post types, or the same blog post formats. It’s also possible you were using a page builder or other plugin that your new theme is not compatible with. You’ll have to look at the features and plugins your old theme used, double check if features are in your new theme, and try reaching out to the developer of your new theme to see if they’d be able to add compatibility for any plugins. Best of luck!
wonderful and helpful post, now I have solved the problem of stylesheet on my WordPress theme. Thank you for sharing the issues and their solution.
I’ve been trying for weeks to replace the menu which disappeared from my site – searching multiple help sites without success. When I looked at your blog post “My Menu is Blank” the answer became clear! Fixed in about three minutes. Thanks so much!
This helped a lot, thanks!
I am getting this error “The package could not be unzipped” while installing pre-built website theme in wordpress. I am using Betheme platform for themes/templates. Any type of help would be appreciated.
I’m not sure… I would suggest reaching out to the theme developer for help.
Thanks alot! This article just save me alot of stress
Ha, awesome! I’m glad to hear that, if you do have any issue in the future come let us know and we’ll do our best to help you out. While we can’t reply to everyone or provide free customization services if it’s something simple we are happy to help. Or if you have experienced any other error in WordPress more than once let us know so we can include it on the list. Thanks!
Hi there I am in the process of updated my new looking website but have been told by Go Daddy I have the white screen of death – I have followed everything through Filezilla and changing the Plug ins and themes to OLD the tried again still saying 500 error and not letting me into my site ??? Can you take a look at my site I have used wordpress for over two years and never experienced this before. Please advise ASAP
I can’t personally troubleshoot your site (it’s not something we offer), but I can point you to this article on how to fix the white screen of death in WordPress. Hopefully one of these solutions will work!
Hey, I downloaded a free version of rare, I did everything that was on the documentation, installed all the plug-ins and all but apparently, when I activate the theme, there aren’t any change happening on the page. Is there any other plug-ins that I should download? Thank you, your reply would be really helpful,
Hmmm – if you’re taking about the Rare theme by Visualmodo there is not a free version. It sounds like you may have accidentally downloaded an illegal copy of the theme, in which case I can pretty much guarantee you will have issues. I would suggest heading over to Visualmodo’s site to buy a true copy of the Rare WordPress Theme and start over building your site. Then if you run into any issues you can as the developer for help.
Hello,
I am trying to customize my theme (Appearance > customize) but the page is forever loading. I checked the console using the developer tools and there is this error:
[edit]
Any idea how I can fix this?
Thanks!
The first line of your error is showing and “Uncaught TypeError” as a result of an of undefined variable for the “HTMLLIElement” – so my guess would be that it’s coming from either custom code for your lists (li elements), or from a plugin. So to start I would suggest double checking anything you’ve custom coded yourself for errors, as well as disabling any new plugins used to style your lists. It’s possible this could be an error coming from your theme if it includes custom list styles as well. Best of luck!
I am currently using the WP Table Builder plugin but it doesn’t show up on some mobile devices (iPad/Android), although I cleared the caches. Why is that & how can I fix it?
Tables can be tricky on mobile, but that specific plugin claims to have “Mobile Responsive Tables” as a feature. My best guess would be that there is a bug or a conflict (either with your theme or another plugin you have installed). I would try switching to a default WordPress theme, and if that doesn’t fix your issue then try deactivating other installed plugins one at a time to see if one of them is the problem. After that you could try reaching out to the developer for help. I’m sure they’ll be able to find a fix!
Thanks so much for this. The updating permalinks seems to have sorted all my loading problems.
Much appreciated.
That’s true, some error is coming in my site
But now solved.
Thanks buddy 👍.
I have more than 60 posts and have well over 100,000 comments other than spam.. I get many comments but they are all on my older posts. My last 20 or so from the past year to present have virtually no comments. It is almost as if they didn’t exist. Any suggestions or issues I could address?
It could be that your older posts rank better, that your audience is more active on social media than within your comments section, etc. I would recommend looking at your traffic (Google Analytics) and SEO (we like ahrefs) and see if anything stands out when comparing reports from last year (more commenting) to this year (less commenting).
Great article. Helped me alot.
Hi, I’m new to wordpress. I’m using prefer blog theme and the published post is totally different with what I saw in preview. The layout, font size everything changed. I tried to switch to default theme (twenty sixteen) and it appeared to be what I want in site view. However, I wish to use other blog theme rather than default theme but at the same time I can publish a post successfully. Can you help?
Not all theme authors style the editor to look like your live site. It sounds like if you want to use the blog theme that you already have you’re going to have to create your content then preview it to be sure it looks how you want.
Hi AJ I have almost completed my site -51 pages -a Mortgage lead generation site.
I have noticed recently that when I go into one of the silos and click on a topic to tweak it all is ok until I click the Home page – what happens then is that the home page shows for brief second and then drops to almost the bottom of my screen – it shows the menu and part of the welcome boxes with a rather large acreage of white space above. In order to get the page to reset to its proper state I have to refresh the page several times until it sorts itself out.
Can you give me some pointers or CSS code that could sort this problem out.
I have my site on wordpress using a Divi theme -I’m also using Laragon.
Kind regards
Ray Hardy
More often than not WordPress site issues are cause by custom code or a plugin. So I would suggest troubleshooting – personally, if something is off I like to start by inspecting with the browser developer tools (for Chrome, use Control+Shift+C on a PC or Command+Option+C on a Mac). Usually this makes it easy to see which plugin, theme or file is the issue. But if it’s not clear after inspecting, try deactivating plugins one at a time to see if you can resolve the issue (then contact the plugin dev) or try commenting out any custom code. Best of luck!
Hi, I’m new to WordPress. I was posting new posts on my website and it was automatically being uploaded in google sitemap. But now I am getting an error it’s not being uploaded automatic and when I try to submit my posts, I’m getting an error. Your post is HTML please submit a valid URL. Please help me I am facing too much difficulty.
Sitemaps are XML files so you can’t submit your posts directly to Google. WordPress has a built-in sitemap functionality which creates a sitemap located at yoursite.com/wp-sitemap.xml – so you can submit this URL to Google. However, if you are using an SEO plugin (which you should) it may have a built-in sitemap functionality and so the URL may be different and you’ll need to check that. But essentially you only need to enter your sitemap in the Google developer tools once and not worry about it ever again. If your sitemap isn’t being automatically updated (you would check by visiting your sitemap URL and making sure your new posts are showing up in the list) then you may have a caching issue and so you’ll want to double check any caching plugins active on your site or check with your hosting company to make sure there is no caching being performed on your sitemap.
Thanks! 😊👍 Its a helpfull article.
Awesome! Hopefully you’ll be able to tackle any basic issues that might come up.
Thank you so much I really appreciate you have ever green post.
A theme I purchased months ago couldn’t be activated with the license key. It’s returning a “You have reached the maximum activation count. Please contact us via [edit] and we will solve this ASAR Sorry about this” error. Someone please help out
It sounds like you purchased a theme with a license for one installation, which means you can only activate the plugin on one live website. If you previously activated your license on a test/demo/staging site or if you’ve changed your URL you may need to contact the theme developer and let them know your situation to be able to active the theme on your now live site. If the email in the error message is where you purchased the theme (or is the name of the developer’s from the marketplace where you purchased) then definitely reach to them for assistance.
The maximum number of errors face from the above… Now I am learning and fixing those…
Ahhhhhh, thank you. I found out the problem with my site was I had an old plugin hanging around and activated. If you want your pages to look like a theme you should really start fresh. Thank you!
My website next button not working I mean when I click on the 2 but its show 1 and doesn’t go ahead.
If you are working with custom post types this is usually a common issue when your custom post type name and slugs are the same. Otherwise it’s likely an issue with your theme. Have you tried switching themes? It could potentially be a plugin conflict as well (less rare) but it’s worth disabling plugins to test and see if that’s the case.
Clear, short and crisp write-up!
Hi. I’m going crazy trying to figure something out that’s probably so simple. I am using a theme forest theme which I purchased a few years ago. I have my site up and never set up a blog of any sort, but would like to use one now, and of course I can’t get any help from theme forest because (I’m assuming) my deadline of receiving technical support has expired. All I’m trying to do is to get my comments to work. I have made several test blog pages, and I can’t get them to have an option to leave a comment. I set it up under discussion settings to allow comments, but still nothing. Could you help me please?
Thanks!
First – from your WordPress admin dashboard, double check that under Settings > Discussion the option for “Allow people to submit comments on new posts” is checked; and that the “Users must be registered and logged in to comment” and “Automatically close comments on posts older than X days” options are both unchecked. Once you’ve confirmed your settings, click “Save Changes” to be 100% sure the settings are applied.
Second – if that didn’t work, it’s possible comments are being disabled on a per post basis. To check, go to your Posts and select the option to “Edit” one of your posts that has already been published. Now look for the Discussion metabox (in Classic themes this will be below the content area, on Gutenberg themes it will be in the right hand sidebar) and make sure the option to “Allow comments” is checked. If it’s not check it and re-save your post.
Third – while rare, it’s possible you’ve chosen a theme that does not feature comments. Go back and double check the theme listing on Themeforest and if possible check the live demo to see if there are comments on the posts to confirm.
Fourth – even if your support license has expired try leaving a comment on the theme listing page on Themeforest. It’s possible this is a bug, in which case the theme dev should be able to help.
I hope you get it fixed soon though!
which version will be best for IIS server, 3.5 .Net Framework or 4.5 .Net Framework?, actully we are getting error run wordpress website include with ASP .Net code.
I’m not familiar with that setup, but Microsoft has a setup guide of WordPress on IIS that I would recommend checking to see if it helps at all with your issue.