Cannot Delete or Replace a Page

Hi, Rich, & welcome to the WordPress support forum. Let’s see if we can’t help clear up some of your confusion. I’m really sorry this is happening to you.

What would be *really* helpful at this juncture is for you to please provide a site url. That will tell us a great deal. Thanks.

Hi Rich,
this is one thing I found out recently. Items in the trash stay there and sometimes you need to “empty” the trash much like in your computers trash/recycle bin.

Perhaps this is why it keeps reappearing.

Hope this helps!

Hi guys,

@solybarr – I’ve already emptied the trash (i.e. “delete permanently”) with no luck but thanks for the suggestion

@jackie – My website is https://subdomain1.rztutor.com; the page in question is /testimonials

Rich, are you aware that your feed url is your testimonials feed? That might be 1 reason for the problem–& it’s precisely why providing an url is *so very* helpful.

Now, another thing–is this a multisite install?

Hi, Rich. Testimonials appears to be archived. You do that w/posts, not pages, so I’m wondering if you created a previous post call testimonials into which you put testimonials. That would likely have the permalink of testimonials. Your page that you put into the trash likely had another permalink, i.e., testimonials-2 or some such–that’s usually how it goes. So–what it means is that if you go to ‘Posts > All Posts’, I’m suspecting you might find 1 there called “Testimonials”, & this would be why that’s occurring. Have a look & let us know if this hypothesis is correct, ok?

@ Jackie

Thanks for your suggestions.

“are you aware that your feed url is your testimonials feed”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Could you please explain/elaborate?

“Testimonials appears to be archived. You do that w/posts, not pages”
That’s what I thought as well, which is why this is very strange. I do not have ANY posts on my site, only pages.

On my site, I’m running the Sydney theme, which has a “Testimonials” section on the left sidebar. In here, I do know that my 5 testimonials have permalinks (e.g. subdomain1.rztutor.com/testimonials/mary). I’ve tried deleting all of them (permanently) but the page (subdomain1.rztutor.com/testimonials) still existed – it just said “no content here”.

I currently have a test page in Pages –> New Page –> “Testimonials” on which I just have the word “Hello” with a permalink of subdomain1.rztutor.com/testimonials. However, this just does not show up.

I’m also not sure if this helps but:

1. I created the original “Testimonials” page.
2. Used SiteOrigin editor and added the “Testimonials” widget
3. Decided the page did not look good
4. Deleted said page
5. Phantom/Archive page issue began

Forgot to address this:

Now, another thing–is this a multisite install?

Not quite sure what a multisite install is exactly but my main domain is https://www.rztutor.com. I’m trying to rebuild my site on this subdomain with the intent to eventually move it and replace my current site. WordPress is installed on both my domain and subdomain.

Rich, I’m beginning to wonder if this SiteOrigin widget of which you speak might actually create content separate from the WordPress CMS. Just curious–what happens if you deactivate the widget?

Now–these testimonials are posts, because if I go to subdomain1.rztutor.com/testimonials/mary, then it says “Posted on July 19, 2016”. So that’s clearly a post. Thus, I rather suspect that you have either categories or tags called testimonials.

Just curious–what happens if you deactivate the widget?
SiteOrigin is actually a Page Builder plugin – I deactivated it just now and it basically just deleted all formatting on my pages but the /testimonials page is still there ??

Thus, I rather suspect that you have either categories or tags called testimonials.

In “Testimonials” section on my left WP Sidebar, I did add two categories – one for “Parent” and one for “Student”. Do you think these categories caused the issue? If so, I can delete them and return my 5 testimonials to just “Uncategorized.”

1 – I deleted the Categories (Parent/Student) and nothing happened.
2 – I moved all my current testimonials (5 of them) to the trash and now /testimonials shows “Nothing Found” which is good but it doesn’t solve the problem.

The problem:
The /testimonials page appears to be a permanent page – I tried creating another page in WP using Pages –> New Page –> “Testimonials” but nothing I type on the new page appears even though the permalink on this new Testimonials page says /testimonials.

Rich, I’m not trying to be condescending here, please believe me. But I’m not sure you’re clear on the difference between a post & a page. In 1 sense, it almost doesn’t matter, but in another sense, it does, because they do actually behave somewhat differently.

Firstly, you create them differently, i.e., for posts, you go to ‘Posts > new Post’, whereas for pages you go to ‘All Pages > New Page’. Posts can be tagged & categorized by default, whereas pages cannot be. This is basically why posts can be archived but not pages. Pages are for more static content like a ‘Contact’ or ‘About Us’ page, Also, by default, posts are generally dated whereas pages are not.

W/that aside, I think that you actually might have a category called ‘testimonials’, underneath which are categories called ‘parent’ & ‘student’. Deleting those categories will get rid of the archives.

No problem – I’m absolutely a WP newb (hence the name) so nothing you say will be construed as condescending. Appreciate the disclaimer though.

I do think I understand your point on Posts vs. Pages though. Let me see if I can link some images, maybe that’ll help.

Rich, first, do you have tags called ‘Testimonials’? 2nd, how did you go about creating the testimonials page–explain it to me like you’re talking to a 2-y/o, please, as Denzel Washington so eloquently said in the Movie “Philadelphia”.

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