Changing menus in Admin does not change menus in site

  • WP Newbie here; PHP Newbie; SQL Newbie. Trial by fire. Normal day, right. WP 4.9.8

    TL;DR: It appears my menus are utterly disconnected from the Appearance/Menus settings and there are no additional menu plugins installed. How do I a) fix my menus to display what I want? and b) reconnect them to the Appearances/Menus setting (if possible)?

    There are 2 menu bars on a site I have just been assigned to work (https://upstatetoday.com), hosted on non-WP-friendly server.

    Was asked to add a job board menu item that linked to a third party job board. Went to the Appearance/Menus setting and inserted a menu item,’Jobs,’ gave it a URL to open in a new window and saved. Nothing appears in any menu. Checked the Locations in menus and confirmed it was active. Deleted ‘Jobs’ menu item from menu. Saved. No change.

    Created a Jobs Page. Set it to redirect to the third party job board. Then returned to the Appearance/Menus setting and added that Page to the menu. Saved. Voila! The menu item appeared as first item in the menu bar. Okay, I’ll just go move it in the Appearances settings. I do. I move it to right next to the ‘Classifieds’ item. Save. No Change. ‘Jobs’ stays at the beginning of the menu. I try moving by Drag n Drop, I try moving by clicking the ‘move up/down/in/out’ arrows. All appears fine in the Settings, but nothing happens on site. I try another browser. Same placement. I try another PC. Same Placement.

    Then I notice that none of the menus in Appearances/menus match any of the menus on the site.

    There are no menu plugins installed. Nothing that seems to allow menu editing. It’s as if a previous person hand-coded the menus — SOMEWHERE. Finally, I decide to search for the menus in the actual files to see if there’s any way of understanding what is going on.

    I download the site, and while I find clues, I can find NOWHERE where the menus are defined. As a newbie, I expected to be lost, and was.

    It appears my menus are utterly disconnected from the Appearance/Menus settings and there are no additional menu plugins installed. How do I a) fix my menus to display what I want? and b) reconnect them to the Appearances/Menus setting (if possible)?

    Thanks for your suggestions.
    John C

    • This topic was modified 5 years, 11 months ago by jcorbin.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • lisa

    (@contentiskey)

    Try the following:

    1-Contact theme developer to see to ask about menu setup
    https://www.methemes.com/themes/arthemia-premium/

    2-Install health check plugin and use the troubleshooting tools to see if same issue happens using default theme.
    https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/health-check/

    3-What does this mean “hosted on non-WP-friendly server”?
    Does he server meet the minimum requirements for WordPress?
    https://www.ads-software.com/about/requirements/

    Thread Starter jcorbin

    (@jcorbin)

    @contentiskey, Thank you for the response!

    1. I’ll do that for sure – the current site at the url of the authors is a wedding photography company, but maybe they just changed biz models and can still answer questions!

    2. doing that right after I send this.

    3. I mean the host doesn’t have things like easy staging, backups, or the like — the company apparently just got a dedicated centos server with Cpanel and put sites on it. Again, newbie here, but things like 1-click staging look awesome compared to the multi-page instructions I see online for doing it by hand. My own cautious unwillingness to take down a live site by accident and lack of “getting” how WordPress works yet also feed that sensation.
    Thanks again!

    lisa

    (@contentiskey)

    I’ve used a plugin Blogvault.net for backup and staging (not a free plugin)

    Thread Starter jcorbin

    (@jcorbin)

    Hi

    Health Check Up reported

    • WordPress Version 4.9.6 – We were unable to check if any new versions are available.
      Plugin Versions
      Your site has 41 active plugins, and they are all up to date.
      Your site has 7 inactive plugins, it is recommended to remove any unused plugins to enhance your site security.
      Theme Versions
      Your site has 6 installed themes, and they are all up to date.
      Your site has 5 inactive themes, other than twentyseventeen, the default WordPress theme, and Arthemia Premium, your active theme. It is recommended to remove any unused themes to enhance your sites security.
      Your site does not have a default theme, default themes are used by WordPress automatically if anything is wrong with your normal theme.
      PHP Version 5.6.38 – For best performance we recommend using PHP 7.2 or higher.
      Database Server version 5.6.41-log

    I have gone to the ColorlabsProject.com page and it appears to be a Wedding Planning Site now. I emailed them anyway to check. I also looked up the Co on a few other sites, but all the content points to the same url. We’ll see how that works out.

    WHen I use Health Check to temporarily view the site in a default theme, the menus are not visible at all. The theme was twentyseventeen. When I used Arthemia Premium in HealthCheck, the top menu was 10 lines deep with things I’d never seen before on it. Upon return to normal viewing, it was only 2 lines, like before.

    I’m manually backup up the site, database. The site folder is apparently too big for the system – 30+ GB. yep GB. I think most of it is in UPLOADS. Sigh. Looks like theyve got 9 years of uploaded newspaper images there, and somewhere around 2013 they stopped reducing file sizes for web use. I’ll DL each year 1 at atime and see if I can fix that.

    Thanks for the assistance. I’ll check out that plugin!
    JC

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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