grid-placeholder.png and blank story pages

  • Resolved benmyhre

    (@benmyhre)


    3 years, 5 months ago

    Hi there. We encountered a new issue where a templated page started appearing after the latest update.

    This is what the user reported.

    I've been using a template that I created for my web stories, and this week I have noticed that the second page on all of my webstories is just showing a blank white page where before there was writing on it. When I pull up the story in wp the slide with the words is there but when I click on the url it's just a white page. It looks like all of my past stories now have a blank second page. I am showing a screen shot of what it looks like in wp and the url without it. I have been checking several old stories and all have a blank second page. Do you have any idea what's going on or how I can fix it?

    After looking at that second slide, it looks like there were 404 errors related to this file:
    https://www.butterandbaggage.com/wp-content/plugins/web-stories/assets/images/editor/grid-placeholder.png

    I took a look at our backups and prior to updating, the editor folder existed. Following the update, the editor folder and the containing image did not exist. We rolled back to a different version and it seems to work (see nuances/notes below). Then, we reupdate and it seemed to break again.

    With the new version, we just created the folder and an image with that name (that doesn’t contain anything) and it seems to be working right now. That said, with the next update, it will likely be a problem again.

    I checked another implementation of the current plugin version and it, also, does not have that folder.

    Two nuances of information for clarification and understanding.

    1. I think we might be seeing some delays in how we are able to see things because of Google caching? Between the client and us we seem to see be seeing delayed results of how the front end amp page displays… it seems to take a while for changes to appear when we are manipulating versions and these folders? I just wanted to mention this, as we have been tripping our own feet on this and it might be skewing what we think we are seeing.

    2. It looks like some work might currently be done with this? https://github.com/google/web-stories-wp/commit/27b283146437184b22fb8fde9804bf771b956caa — that said, I don’t think this is in the latest versions code, but it certainly seems timely.

    Any help would be appreciated.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

  • @benmyhre Hello! Thanks for your report. We’ll be happy to check on this but could you share a few additional details?

    1) What caching plugin are you using? We can take a closer look if you could you provide your Site Health information? You can share privately if you prefer.

    2) To confirm, you are seeing a blank second page for the story referenced here? This (https://jmp.sh/PgLsPkV) is what I see on that page. Could you share a screenshot of what you’re expecting?

    3) Could you confirm if the template you are using is the Trendy Winter Veggie?

    Thread Starter benmyhre

    (@benmyhre)

    1) I sent the information in the private link and this site uses WP Rocket, but is also cloudflare enterprise.

    2) To confirm, you are seeing a blank second page for the story referenced here? TRUE

    What you are seeing is how it should act and how we are currently seeing it. To make it work, we had to manually create the media folder and the grid-placeholder file in the web story plugin files. Without it, and after time passes,this particular page using that template on all historical web stories show up as blank. Just a white page. The other slides are fine.

    3)I cant really say… it sounds like the user copied a template from a while ago and then just duplicate it. Here is what she said “I got the slide from their templates and I just duplicate my grouping of slides that includes that slide. It’s no longer in their template folder. I’m not sure what it was called when I initially started using it.”

    Thank you, @benmyhre! We’ve received the info and will do some testing on our end. We’ll let you know if there are additional details needed.

    Plugin Author Pascal Birchler

    (@swissspidy)

    assets/images/editor/grid-placeholder.png is indeed a file that we used to have in the plugin but has since been removed.

    It was used for the page templates feature in the editor, where you could insert page templates with actual images or with a placeholder. We’ve since removed the placeholder option and with it this image.

    On the https://www.butterandbaggage.com/web-stories/pumpkin-muffins-with-cream-cheese-filling/ story I see the placeholder image being used on page 4.

    You should be able to open that story in the editor, go to page 4, select the placeholder image from the layers panel and remove it. Update/save the story afterwards for the change to take effect.

    Thread Starter benmyhre

    (@benmyhre)

    Ahh… I found a separate story where the same issue (she has many … ie https://www.butterandbaggage.com/web-stories/hamburger-helper-without-a-box/) and a few others.

    It does seem like the solution is to manually edit each of these stories and remove that. That said, it feels a bit icky for an update like this to suddenly break almost 100 stories and the solution is manually edit each one because files were removed from the repo. I presume there are some users with more than 100 stores created that could be impacted by similar items.

    It feels like if someone puts in a whole bunch of effort in using the tool, they shouldn’t just break on an update like this and be a little more sturdy when it comes to backward compatibility.

    Thread Starter benmyhre

    (@benmyhre)

    It might actually be several hundred story pages that need to be edited among 100 published pages. Not a great outcome on this one.

    Plugin Author Pascal Birchler

    (@swissspidy)

    Absolutely. Not breaking existing stories is important to us.

    In this particular case, we were not aware of any stories using these placeholder images in the wild, since they are placeholders meant to be replaced.

    We were also not seeing any such breakage in our testing when we removed the placeholder feature, otherwise we could have caught it.

    Anyhow, we’ll make sure to prioritize addressing this in our next release (slated for next week).

    Thread Starter benmyhre

    (@benmyhre)

    @swissspidy perfect. I will roll her site back and just wait for the next release. Thanks for addressing it. I appreciate it greatly.

    Hiya, @benmyhre! We’ve recently released a new version of Web Stories for WordPress which includes the fix for the placeholder issue. Please update to the latest version and confirm the issue has been resolved on your end as well.

    If you experience any issues please open a new support topic and we will be happy to assist.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)
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