Featured posts remove random content from site

If certain posts are given the “featured” tag (Even if they’re not in the grid, just have the tag) random content like the sidebar, posts below or something else disappears.

Twenty Fourteen runs a function called pre_get_posts for the featured section and in this function it has a rule not to show those posts in the feed.

Was not aware that that rule also affects other content locations like sidebars so will have to check on that.

What I know of the theme is that the function is hard coded to show 6 posts as featured be that in the grid format or the slider. So irrespective if you have 6 or more post tagged with the same tag used for the featured content, all of them will not appear in the blog feed due to the above function’s conditional rules.

Having said that, Fourteen Extended has an option for you to show those posts in the feed if you wish to do so. Can I ask if you’ve tried that setting?

Hopefully this is the issue but if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick then please do elaborate a little more so that I can try to assist you further.

Regards,
Zulf

I’ve tried removing tags so that only 6 posts have them and I also tried enabling the option to show them in the feed.
Neither seems to have worked.

I’ll add this: It only applies to certain posts.

It only happens if I give the featured tag to that specific post.
Even if it’s the only post with the tag it’ll still remove random content from my site.
I’ve tried changing featured images, changing the title and the permalink, none have solved the problem thus far.

Also the problem about disappearing posts is not related to the tag. Post which don’t have the tag and never had are also vanishing. (Including the lust of pages at the bottom) and also the footer disappears.

It’s a pretty confusing problem. I’m cracking my brain, but I find nothing in common between all the posts causing this problem.

Also thanks for the fast reply.

Can I ask you to test with just the default theme with no plugins active.

That includes the video embed thumbnail generator plugin and see if you still have the issue.

After that if you could test with the default theme plus the fourteen extended only – this will confirm that the plugin is or isn’t the cause of the issue and we can proceed with debugging from there.

I’m willing to run the tests myself if you are willing to share the xml export from your site – let me know if that’s acceptable to you.

Zulf

My video thumbnail generator is actually a script not a plugin, but I disabled it. (And Akismet while I was at it, just in case). Still got the same problem.

Screenshot: Here

Also I’m more than happy sharing my export, there’s nothing private on my site:

Export (All content): Export

Thanks for taking your time to help me with this.

OK now I’m seeing more content than I was seeing before after you deactivated the script.

Thanks for the file, I’ve imported in a test site and will run it through the motions later on and see what I can figure out. The only thing is the import did not pull in the media files (videos) so will test with some embed from YouTube.

For reference I’m running the tests here: https://wpliveserver.com/fourteen/

Great! Thanks! hope you can figure something out.

Also you’re free to visit my site to get the source links from there. (Right click any video while it’s playing and click “Copy Video Location”), If you’d ever need to for any reason. I have no bandwidth limits and can handle 320 MBit/s output.

Also, the videos HERE use no fancy stuff like WebM fallback so they load from my site, you might want to use this post for testing purposes.

Cool, will do that and get back to you as soon as I can.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this!

Just looping back on the “video thumbnail generator is actually a script not a plugin” – I’m wondering if that is what was or could have been conflicting with the plugin’s FitVids script?

Was the option for FitVids activated at the time you had the script running?

Still running the tests..

Zulf

No, I have never even tried the FitVids option unfortunately.

OK.

Currently on the test site I have the feature grid showing, I see more posts than you had before removing/disabling the thumbnail generator (i.e. I don’t have that script on my server) – Fourteen Extended plugin is active and the footer is in place.

From what you can tell are there any posts missing i.e. any random post that should be in the feed that are not there?

Here’s the link again: https://wpliveserver.com/fourteen/

No, I don’t see any missing posts. Maybe it’s my settings within Extended? Is there some sort of config file I can delete to reset the settings and see if that works?
Even when I delete the plugin and redownload it it seems to keep the settings.

No, there’s no config file for that.

The problem at the moment is the way the theme handles its transients – they are working on fixing this in the next version.

The advice given at the moment is to remove all settings of the plugin back to the defaults – that mean unchecking the check boxes and leaving the fields blank. Save, exit and deactivate the plugin – you may delete it at this point just to make sure.

Revisit the customizer section, take some action so that the save button is activated, save and exit the customizer – this action is suppose to delete the theme’s transients.

You can now re-install and activate the plugin which will give you a fresh start and go from there.

Let me know how it goes and if there’s anything else I can help with.

Regards,
Zulf

Oddly enough this seemed to solve the problem, though I disabled nothing but “Center Align Site” and “Set Single posts to full width”. I re-enabled them after reinstalling the plugin and everything works (Thus far)

It might be a bug or I simply had bad luck. Either way it solved the problem. Thanks!
(You might want to keep a lookout for similar problems from other people though to make sure it’s not a bug)

Cool.

Thanks for the feedback – will definitely keep an eye on that.