ravel right sidebar doesn't appear on mobile devices

Try clicking on the red, diamond-shaped icon in the upper left corner. It’s an odd place to put a sidebar, though, normally a menu would go there.

Now what’s weirder is that the diamond icon is hidden on my iPhone. If I tap the upper left corner, where it should be, the sidebar and icon appears, but if I tap it again, it disappears. Definitely a bug in the theme.

For some reason the home page disappeared, and then the blog works on mobile devices. But this theme is supposed to support a home page. Ok, just heard that the blog posts come up, but only parts and not all of the post.
I can’t see a diamond on the computer or on the mobile device.

I don’t have a mobile device, so I have to get feedback from my friends on it.

If you make the browser window on your computer narrow enough (i.e., change the width), the red diamond should appear in the upper left corner. It doesn’t appear on my cell phone, though, which is a problem.

A home page is just another term for the opening page (also called the front page) of your site. You can either have a blog index (i.e., a listing of all of your recent blog posts) as your home page, or a static page as your home page. You choose between the two options by going to Settings > Reading.

Thanks so much for trying to help me. I found my static home page again. When I choose it for the home page (which is what I want),on my computer there is a right side bar with the posts. But when I use the static home page, the right sidebar with the “recent posts” doesn’t appear on the mobile devices. If you look at the blog now on a mobile device, you only see what I created for the static page, and you can’t access the posts at all! The folks at wordpress seemed to solve this same issue on another theme with a change in the code. But I can’t figure out how to adapt that code to Ravel. Do you think they will eventually read this and help?

I just figured out what you meant by reducing the size of the screen on my computer and then the diamond popped up on the left. My friend with the ipad said she didn’t see a diamond on her device. It was so big and obvious on my screen I can only imagine that it really isn’t there for her.

The diamond is actually there on mobile devices, but as I mentioned in my earlier post, it is hidden from view for some reason. If your friend tries tapping in the upper left corner of her iPad screen, the sidebar should slide out. But that’s not really helpful to your site’s visitors since they won’t know that it’s there.

For sites which do not have a blog on their home page (i.e., they have a static page for their home page), they usually have a menu item that points to their blog page. I noticed that you don’t have a menu set up, so you may want to create one by going to Appearance > Menus.

The folks at wordpress seemed to solve this same issue on another theme with a change in the code. But I can’t figure out how to adapt that code to Ravel. Do you think they will eventually read this and help?

I don’t think so. It is up to the developer of the theme to fix any bugs that might be associated with their theme. The only themes that the WordPress team would fix are those that they created, like Twenty Ten, Twenty Eleven, etc. It looks like the official support forum for Ravel is here, so you may try posting a question in that forum. This theme acts so strangely (at least to me) that I would consider picking another theme.

Again, thank you for your help. The reason that I chose that theme is that the shape of the picture matched my needs. I think I will take your advice and try another theme. (I didn’t type in more posts waiting to see if I would have to change themes). You helped me understand some additional stuff, for which I am really grateful. Do you think that the twenty… series work better?
I did wonder if a menu would solve the problem on Ravel, but I couldn’t really figure out how it worked, where it would show up, etc.
Where would it show up?

You won’t lose any posts or pages if you change themes. One of the strengths of WordPress is that you can install and try any theme without losing any of your site information, and if you don’t find an alternate theme you like, you can always go back to your original theme. On my sandbox (test) site, I have over 100 themes installed, and I switch very easily between them. Since you already have some posts on your site, it will make it easier to see if a particular theme is going to suit you.

A menu is used to access different static pages on your site. For example, if you create a page called Contact where you had contact information for visitors to get in touch with you, then you would add a menu item for it by going to Appearance > Menus, creating a menu (if you don’t already have one), then adding the Contact page to the menu. For most themes, you also have to specify the location in which a menu goes, because WordPress allows you to create multiple menus, and some themes have multiple locations where menus can be placed.

If you have a basic understanding of CSS, you can change the appearance of just about any web element (like image sizes) on any theme, so don’t reject a particular theme just because it doesn’t display an image in the right size or dimensions. If you don’t understand CSS, there’s a very basic tutorial here.

If you do decide to look for another theme, the WordPress theme repository has a tag filter page that you can use to narrow down your search. Since it appears that it is important for you to have a mobile-friendly site, I would check off responsive-layout as one of your selections. If you find a theme that you like, you can install it directly through the admin dashboard by going to Appearance > Themes, click Add New, and type the theme name in the search field.

As far as the Twenty … themes go, I personally don’t use them, but a lot of people find them easy to use, plus there’s usually good support on their help forums. I support several sites with different appearances and layouts. I wanted to use just one theme for all of them so I wouldn’t have to learn the quirks of multiple themes, so I use one particular theme that has a lot of customization options. The theme is, however, more suited for someone who has a background in HTML and CSS (or someone who would like to spend the time learning).

When you setup a front page (a page template for the home), the theme will display as fullwidth, so in this case there is no sidebar. The red toggle is a sidebar toggle, not a menu toggle. So I believe this is the expected behaviour.

What I would do is make sure to have a blog link into the menu, or from the front-page content, add a link inviting user to visit the blog.. so the sidebar will be activated once user is on the blog archive.

On my iphone I also have some problems with the sidebar, it do not show the toggle as expected when it should. But if I click where the toggle is supposed to be, it works. I definitely will not change to another theme just ’cause of this minor bug.

Here goes some more information about the theme:

– Oficial Theme page: https://themehybrid.com/themes/ravel
– Suport: https://themehybrid.com/support/forum/ravel
– Oficial repository on github – https://github.com/justintadlock/ravel

Also I have already built two sites with Ravel. Maybe you should give a try to the oficial support… and if there is a bug, the theme author probably will show you how to fix it with some code within your child-theme.

Thank you for your info and ideas. The side bar does appear on my computer screen. Just not on mobile devices. I will try setting up a menu, though I found it a bit confusing. I will try it again. I will also try the links you provided. Thanks so much!

Unfortunately, you have to pay $25 per year if you want to ask a question (or even view any of the questions) on their support forum. Seems like if the developer is going to post their theme in the WordPress theme repository, they should be a little more responsive to bug fixes, even if it’s a free theme.

Hi CrounchingBruin,

I think that $25 year is cheap. I learned WP with the author who created the Ravel theme, just reading questions, answers and asking questions there. Not just themes, but a lot of articles and tutorials are available for free from the same author.

I agree with Crouching Bruin. If you put up a theme, it would be right to make sure it works, without charging- or be up front that it may not work, and you can’t get support without paying.
I may have (accidentally) stumbled upon the fix to my problem. Not sure yet. I thought a building a blog was going to be easier than a website, but that isn’t how it was for me.