Anyone Else Receiving Blank Pages?

  • Has anyone else been noticing a recent spat of blank pages when using WordPress? (Apparently not, since all I can more immediately find in searches are references to new installations or more specific issues like plugin conflicts.)

    Our site has been up and running for a while, so it’s no new installation.
    https://www.raisingjane.org/journal/
    It’s updated to ver 3.5.1 (and has been for a few months at least; Feb was the last time I did a major update, which was probably to 3.5.1); and we’re using a customized version of WordPress’ Twenty Ten theme.

    We had a complaint recently where a user is seeing only a blank page. They had been following our site for a long while with no problem (even had it as their start page), and this started just recently. They’re using IE (and tested on Opera, too, of all the browsers); tested on several computers and a tablet at home, as well as at their church. I’m trying to get version-specific info out of them.

    I’ve never seen a problem at work or at home, largely using Firefox, sometimes Chrome; don’t see any issues in IE 10 right now. BUT! I do see an issue on my phone (an Android Samsung Galaxy SII). It loads (and if I’m on a slow connection, I’ll see it loading for a while, piece by piece); then once finished, blammo! Blank white page.

    Going to another WordPress site I’m often asked to compare against:
    https://thepioneerwoman.com
    They have a mobile theme set up apparently, which I do not. So my phone has no issue, but if I browse this site using IE10 on my desktop, the page goes through some various loading phases, I can see some content load, and then, plunk, empty page showing only the site’s background image (mottled grey). This is IE 10 on Windows 7 x64.

    All the code is loaded. (I compared the source against what Firefox returns, when it’s displaying properly.)

    In a moment, I’m going to review the chunks of CSS from Twenty Ten relating to mobile to see if they offer any clues.
    Aside, perhaps, from theme-incompatibilities (which, if so, why has it taken a while to manifest?), and new posts and other user content, what else? The only other changes I’ve made recently (this year) have been to sidebar-content (incl adding Google AdSense); and displaying and formatting the pagination feature for comments (vs “older posts”/”newer posts” links) cf https://www.raisingjane.org/journal/35249/comment-page-5#comments .
    If it’s a plugin incompatibility, A) why now? B) why is this other site having a similar issue in IE for me? whereas my own site is not?

    Another user on my work network is still in IE8/Windows XP, and has been loading the site alright (albeit with complaints of slowness and crashing [once], which may or may not be related to recent changes, because they seem to be issues with scripts). And that IE8 loads thepioneerwoman.com without incident.

    So I seem to be seeing various issues with mobile and/or IE10/maybe IE9. Is anybody else?

Viewing 4 replies - 16 through 19 (of 19 total)
  • Thread Starter maryjanesfarm

    (@maryjanesfarm)

    Well, this is why I make slow progress learning programming…
    OK!
    Finally removed duplicate call to a jQuery library; moved all my head Javascript to external files and determined how to link Javascript files “the right way” so they could actually access jQuery; spent time troubleshooting why $ wouldn’t work anymore (assign random variable like $j the jQuery object reference, since apparently there was some sort of conflict over $ once I removed my call to a jQuery library); duplicated the PHP info that was readily available in head to make it available to an external Javascript file; and all seems to work still, again.

    Correct my assumption that JetPack inserts the call to jQuery. jQuery is built into WordPress. Probably the reason I didn’t realize this initially is because of the conflict over $, and so thought jQuery was not available. Dunno.

    Also, my phone stopped displaying the page properly once I went through this process. So, apparently duplicate jQuery calls were not the answer for that. But! I happened to run across a setting for the page, “Desktop View”, click that … golden. I’m assuming the phone won’t display the page normally because it looks for or gets dumped over into a mobile view, except there’s no mobile stylesheet.

    (If I click “View Mobile Site” at the bottom [from JetPack, I’m more certain this time], I do get a workable mobile site.)

    Anyway, still have to find out whether any of these changes affect the end user on IE.

    I’m assuming the phone won’t display the page normally

    Twentyten is not a responsive theme – it’s fixed width – not designed or coded to adjust to mobile devices. That’s another drawback of outdated themes.

    JetPack has a mobile option, yes.

    Sounds like you learned a lot, anyway :).

    Good luck with the IE issues…

    Thread Starter maryjanesfarm

    (@maryjanesfarm)

    Yes, it was good to learn how scripts were intended to be handled in WordPress, and that it was already calling jQuery in some fashion.

    Even if I derived from a newer theme, it would still be the desire that I create a fixed-width theme (effectively). There’s not much call in this venue for fluidity or adaptability.

    But, thanks again for your help. And songdogtech, too!

    Thread Starter maryjanesfarm

    (@maryjanesfarm)

    OK. Heard back and resolved the issue, it seems.

    Not at all what I’d expected.
    Windows 7 x64 at church and home, with a Samsung Android tablet. IE 8, with Opera as the browser of choice.

    Removing AdSense resolved the issue. Squared it away on my phone, too – no need to select “Desktop view” now.

    I found a few things in searches about AdSense causing blank screens. I’ll keep looking further for why this would be an issue. I’m especially wondering about the ad-randomizing function in relation to AdSense. Maybe those conflict. It could be that leaving AdSense but removing the randomizing function would work, too. All sorts of combos to try, and since the user’s system is Win 7 x64, all I’d have to do is reset to IE 8 to see if I see the same.

Viewing 4 replies - 16 through 19 (of 19 total)
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