Site failure: cannot view site or access my admin panel

I was attempting to add the SoundCloud oEmbed code to the theme’s phd.

Explain more on this, please.

Were you modifying a core theme file?

I just switched from wordpress.com to www.ads-software.com this week, and am still getting used to how things work around here. I’m not sure if what I tried to do was modifying a core theme file. I was in Editor, and selected the link for theme functions on the right column of where the style sheet was.

I was attempting to add a SoundCloud player on the site, and followed the directions here: https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-embed-soundcloud-in-your-wordpress-posts-by-using-oembed/

It said to add the following to the theme’s functions.php file:

1// Add SoundCloud oEmbed
2 function add_oembed_soundcloud(){
3 wp_oembed_add_provider( ‘https://soundcloud.com/*’, ‘https://soundcloud.com/oembed’ );
4}
5add_action(‘init’,’add_oembed_soundcloud’);

I remember I had multiple tabs of the site open, and pressing save on this Editor page opened a new one with the error message. I thought perhaps I had done it wrong, so went back to the still-open Editor page, and deleted the code. Pressing save on that also opened a tab with the error message, and at this point refreshing any page of the open website brought up the error message.

Thanks for your help!

Gotcha.
Yep.. you messed up your theme file ??

You will need to use either your hosts cPanel (or an FTP program) to gain access to your file directories for your website.

Next, download a new copy of your theme (without any modifications).

Then…

1. Extract the theme .zip file, and find the functions file you modified. Put that file in an accessible location, we’ll use it in a minute.

2. Log into your cPanel (or FTP) and navigate to the “wp-content/themes” directory.

3. One there, you should see the folder for your theme. Open that folder and find the same functions file mentioned in step 1.

4. Now, you want to REPLACE the modified file on your server with the CLEAN file extracted in step 1.

5. When you upload that file, you should be asked if you want to replace the existing file.. click “Yes”.

After that, assuming that’s the only thing that broke, you should be able to log back into your site.

Thanks for this! I’m logged into my hosts cPanel, and can see just about everything you’re talking about in the later steps but just want to make sure I do the first thing correctly: where/how do I download a new copy of my theme? Do I do this within the File Manager or somewhere else in the cPanel?

What is the theme you are using? Is it from the WP repository?

Do you have a link to the theme?

It’s Polar Lite. When I search for it on WP this comes up: https://www.ads-software.com/themes/polar-lite. It’s empty but all themes show up empty on there (?).

Googling around, I think it is possible to download it from here: https://fthe.me/polar-lite/. This would give me a zip file.

Got it! It worked! Assuming that last link was a legitimate source for the file, then I think I am good to go. Site is back up and running. Thank you so much Josh for your helpful and successful instructions!

Lesson learned: no touching the theme function php file. Stick to the style sheet… ??

I’m sorry… I got distracted on a phone call ??

Glad you got it working!!

Yeah… modifying theme files is a big ‘no-no’.. as you have already learned ??

Instead.. we use what is called a ‘child theme‘. You can create a child theme for ANY theme. It allows you to further customize the parent theme… without worrying about modifications being over-written.

If you want to add/remove functionality of your theme, if it’s not already available in the options panel, then the child theme is your next step ??

You can add a functions.php file to your child theme.. and create and add custom functions in that file.

Sounds good. Polar Lite is a child theme of Sueva, which made me think it was editable in that regard…but I see what you’re saying is that it’s possible to make a child theme of a child theme. Cool! I’ll look into that if I need to make any big changes in the future.

Thanks again!