child theme styles fourteen dont work

That’s a lot of work for the very simple aspect of switching a theme.

1) Install theme

2) Activate on the site

3) Done.

That’s IT.

No, Ipstenu, unfortunately its not. The theme we have today has a “homemade header, and we have only used post(1450 so far), no pages, and the use of tags and categories (we have 99) is not very structured. Our page doesnt support menus. Thats why we now wants a new theme. Therefore we made this testpage to see what we have to fix before we, as you say “install and activate”. If we had done that, we would have got all this trouble on our up and go page, which would have been a disaster. And since we customize the theme pretty much, we are adviced to use a child theme to avoid redoing all the work every time we have an update.
you can chek our active page here, and you will see what I mean

https://www.facebookies.org/

Well… no I don’t understand, because I don’t see why you’re doing things intentionally the hard way (actually I don’t know what this has to do with Multisite to be honest). Also you’ve written everything in one paragraph which is a little complex to follow along with.

Child Themes work fine on Multisite and on WP 4.0. If they’re not working on your site, it’s a conflict with ‘something else.’

I only changing theme on one of the pages in this test.

Do you mean only changing the theme on one SITE?

I have added theme twenty fourteen, and customized that with styles and styles twenty fourteen, and it all looked good.

Did you do this with a plugin? Which plugin? Can you link to it?

Then I upgraded to WP 4.0 and the styles function dissapear,a nd I got a msgs saying that I should add the Style fourteen plug, even if it was there.

Awesome! It IS a plugin, Which one?

1. The website is a multisite website, with admin network. I thought this forum was for this kind of site. Please tell me if I am wrong.

2. This is a site that has been running for 5 years, has nmore than 1450 posts, no pages, 99 categories and even more tags, so the structur is not good and compatible with other themes. If I just innstalled this theme (2014), it would look weird. There would be no mensu, no header, the colors and fonts would be wrong, no posts with featured pics etc. I tried with a preview, so I have seen this with my own eyes.

3. Therefor we made a copy of the site, to try this out and to see what we needed to change and adjust and prepare for the innstallation on the original page.

4. We have two sites in our network, and I only do this test on one of the sites. The two sites are almost similare but in two different languages.

5. On the test site I installed the theme (2014) and also the 3 styles plugins “color fourteen”, “Styles” and “Styles twenty fourteen”. I installed this in the network admin, and activated both theme and plugins for the site I made the test. Everything was okay, and we had found the correct colors, fonts and tested out sliders and grids and made menus and reorgenized the widgets, since we now had two option for sidebars, and not only one sidebar as in the old one.

6. Then we updated to WP 4.0. to be sure everything was okey between the theme and new version of WP and the changes we had done. From that moment we have had the problem with this error. I know it doesnt relate to WP 4.0 itself, since I updated another site where I use theme 2014 with those styles, so it must be related to either a plugin or the multisite function.

6. I deactivated every plugin, adn switched on one by one until every plugin was activated again to find out which one made the problem. But I could find any. After all the plugins where switched on, the error was gone. I therefore thought it was just a temporary problem.

7. After a while the problem was back again. During the process above I was adviced to make a child theme and make the changes there instead of in the default theme to avoid redoing my changes for every update in the future, and I hoped this also would solve the error with teh styles plugin. I installed the one click child theme plug in and a child theme based on theme 2014 was made.

8. My problem now is that the child theme doesnt seem to care that “Styles twenty fourteen” is active. I dont get the styles options in the customize menu. It looks like I dont have the plugin, which I actually have.

9. I deactivated the child theme, and deleted theme 2014. I tried several other themes that are based on theme 2014, but decided to go back to the default theme again,and starting all over.

10. I deactiavted all plugins, installed theme 2014 again, and activated the “coulor fourteen, styles ans styles twenty fourteen. Then I clicke don “preview” for theme 2014 and again I got that error msgs as I mention in the title of this post. SO there is no plugins that are active unless these 3 color styles plugins for theme 2014, and still I get this error. SO I dont get what can be the conflict here. And I only have this conflict on this multisite. And I dont take the chance with making a child theme and start adjusting before I have solved this problem.

Not sure whant you meant with this: “Awesome! It IS a plugin, Which one?”

I know very well the difference on a plugin and theme. And I now that Styles twenty fourteen is a plugin. But that knowledge doesnt give me the answer on why theme 2014 denies its is there and active.

And I now that Styles twenty fourteen is a plugin.

Yes, but I don’t. What plugin? Link please?

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/styles-twentyfourteen/

Is it that one?

3. Therefor we made a copy of the site, to try this out and to see what we needed to change and adjust and prepare for the innstallation on the original page.

And how did you do that? A copy of the whole network? Did you just copy the site and use a duplicator plugin?

Sorry, my bad, I thought you were familiar with the color plugins for theme 2014. I live in my selfcentered little them 2014 world right now.

These are the 3 color styles plugins for theme 2014 :

this one is the most used one:
https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/fourteen-colors/

this one gives you possibilities to change color on every aspect in the theme:

https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/styles-twentyfourteen/

the second one requiers this pluigin: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/styles/

3. We have made a complete copy of the multisite, with the whole content. It is done by one of the other network admins, so I dont know exactly how it is done. Its the host we use who gives us this possibility. Actuelly I have two complete test sites for this purpose. One to play around with,and one where we will do the full replacement when every detailed are decided, before we do the change on the original site.
It may looks like we are doing it the hard way, but I cant even imagine the mess if we must have struggled with all these problems for weeks on the original site. Now we can deal with it in a hidden place and hopefully solve the problems so we can finally get a theme that gives us a better structured site.

I may review plugins, but there are 50k of them, counting the ones disabled and closed, so … Yeah. That’s impossible to be familiar with all of them ?? When you link us, you make sure we know exactly what you’re on about.

So … are you using all three of those plugins at once?

We have made a complete copy of the multisite, with the whole content. It is done by one of the other network admins, so I dont know exactly how it is done.

That’s a very tricky thing to do, and very easy to mess up, and could very well be what’s wrong here. You have to make sure you duplicate the database and then do a search/replace in a serialization safe way to change the URLs.

Yes, I use them all three. I started with this one “fourteen-colors”, since this was the first one that made it possible to change colors on theme 2014 easily, and then I found the “Styles twenty fourteen”, which also reguired “styles” to work. I dont know if “color fourteen” is necesarry, but it doesnt cause any problem on my other sites.

Now when I have started all over again by installing theme 2014 default version and made a child theme, I have only activated “styles” and Styles twenty fourteen” this time. I have just started with it now and so far I havent got any errors msgs. Will see if it goes well this time, I’m not done with the cutomizing yet. crossing fingers.

“That’s a very tricky thing to do, and very easy to mess up, and could very well be what’s wrong here. You have to make sure you duplicate the database and then do a search/replace in a serialization safe way to change the URLs.”

I dont know if there are any mistakes, but it works perfectly and the content seems taken care of. I have played with the test site now for several weeks, and this problem with the styles has been the only problem so far. I have seen other users complain about this error too, but due to other situations.

If that fails, I would step back and remove Multisite from the picture.

Make a clean, basic, install of WP with Twenty Fourteen and install those plugins to see if they do what you want.

I’m back ??
The plugins “Styles” and “styles fourteen” went well for 2 days. Everything was ok. 15 mins ago I deleted a theme I had innstalled just to test it (Nirvana) for our site. There was an update, and since I didnt need teh theme any longer, I deleted it from the admin Network. And then the two “styles” plugins stopped working again,a dn I was back to basic default version of Theme 2014.

I deactivated all plugins, and acitvated them again, first the plugins on Network, then the two “styles” plugins on the site i work with. Still problems.
I deactivated all plugins again, and now I activated the two “styles” plugins on teh site first, and everything came back. I then activated the plugins on the network, and it is still ok.

So it is not any plugn that cause the problem, but a change in the network system. This time a deleting of a theme. The first time it happened was an update of WP and the theme 14, the second time it happened was an update of a plugin. So its seems it is the change itself, and not the result of the change.

Any ideas of what this can be? I cant take the chance in replacing a theme and ending up doing this deactivating/activating proceedure over and over again.

You need to step back and test locally, with a single site install. I don’t think the issue is Multisite at all, I think it’s the plugins and how you set them up.

I have a single site where I use theme twenty fourteen, and there every things runs fine. I dont have the exacte same plugins though, since this is a newer site, and I have used newer plugins. I can install the same plugins that is active on the test site and see what happenes.

I dont have the exacte same plugins though

That’s what I’m telling you to do. ?? Install them, test, see what happens.

I am having similar problem. I made several themes in twenty fourteen and had problems. I did everything correctly. I activated the first twenty fourteen parent and after the child theme. The styles were imported, but have lasted a short time. The colors work in some browsers and other work differently. After all, my site is not opening properly on mobile devices. See this screenshot:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zdg52yhngreystr/mobile-problem.JPG?dl=0
See my site em diferents browsers:
https://www.obrasileirinho.com.br/

I havent had time to install all the plugins I have on the test site to the site that works perfectly yet. I’m on travel these days, but will do it in the end of the week. So I have no answers to this yet. But on the site that works perfectly, both on Iphone and PC (both Chrome and IE) I have these plugins installed. Maybe that can help you a bit:

Jetpack
Styles
Styles foruteen
Fourteen colors
NextGEN Gallery by Photocrati
Private only
Upcoming Events Lists
WP Maintenance Mode
WP Super Cache

This is the site I now will install all the plugins I have on my testsite, to figure out if it is the plugins that causes the trouble.