New WRITR Udate, No More Sidebar :(

Hi there,

Is WordPress updated to the most recent version, 3.9.1?

Can you please try temporarily deactivating all of your plugins, and then reactivating them one-by-one to see if one of them is interfering with your widgets displaying?

A link to your site would also be helpful.

Thanks!

I’m having the same problem. Just updated this morning.

this is my link if you are interseted: https://keripix.pethak.com/. And I’m using wordpress 3.9.1.

It seems that the widgets are there, but there’s no visibility for them (I’ve just checked the elements and the css. Not sure if that’d help though)

Hi @keripix — did you change your theme? You’re using Isola right now, which has a toggle button for the sidebar.

I’m trying to reproduce the missing sidebar issue with the latest version of Writr, but I can’t make it happen, so any additional information you can provide would be a big help.

For example, did you make CSS customizations to the previous version of Writr that could be affecting this? Does the sidebar appear if you temporarily deactivate all of your plugins?

Thanks!

I’m using Writr on a client’s site and just noticed the same issue. The issue happened after updating to the current version of the theme. I tried the usual troubleshooting steps (disable all plugins, etc.) and nothing fixed the issue.
On Firefox, it appears as if the sidebar extends out the entire width of the sidebar area all the way over to the right edge of the content for the header image, site title, and tagline. Everything else seems to be hidden behind the actual post content.
On Chrome, the sidebar just appears to have no content. Viewing the page source shows the content is actually there, but it just isn’t visible when viewing the site.

Hi @Oizuled — could you please provide a link to the site so I can take a look?

<I deleted what I thought I may have done to fix it>

Those experiencing the issue … i fixed the issue on my site late one night, but can’t recall what I did to fix it…

One thing I know is that I did not have to add any code to the css.

Good Luck and sorry I don’t remember what I had to activate. I will keep looking around to see if it jumps out at me.

The site is https://surpriseazmom.com
I also just found this post, which suggested a theme update to fix the issue. I downloaded the update, but it didn’t help.
I will try the other suggestions though and report back.

The Accessibility mode and adding/changing widgets suggestions that @zippy80 suggested didn’t work either. I’m going to try going back to an older version of the theme and see if that fixes the issue for the time being. If it helps, I’ll take a look to see what changed between the two versions to hopefully iron this out.

Hi @Oizuled and everyone – Thanks for the additional details. I’m filing a Trac ticket for this, so the theme devs can take a look.

Hi @Oizuled!

Can you try disabling your child theme and see if things go back to normal? This may be related to markup changes in the parent theme that are no longer compatible with your child theme. Let us know if that helps.

Cheers,
Caroline

Also, in case it’s helpful, this is a full “diff” of the changes to Writr with the last update:
https://themes.trac.www.ads-software.com/changeset?old_path=/writr/1.0.8&new_path=/writr/1.1.1

Thanks for the tip – I did revert to the parent theme earlier, but gave it a shot again. It seemed to bring back the sidebar content to some extent this time – maybe I was looking at a cached version before?? However it’s still missing the header image, site title, site tagline, and some footer content.

I copied over the updated parent theme files to my child theme where applicable. The site’s child theme edits 3 files and adds a new template file for a category page. No CSS edits are made in style.css.

• header.php – added <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.ico"> just before <?php wp_head(); ?>. Parent and child files are otherwise exactly the same.
• footer.php – edited the credits in the site-info section from:

  <div class="site-info">
  			<?php do_action( 'writr_credits' ); ?>
  			<div><a href="https://www.ads-software.com/" title="<?php esc_attr_e( 'A Semantic Personal Publishing Platform', 'writr' ); ?>" rel="generator"><?php printf( __( 'Proudly powered by %s', 'writr' ), 'WordPress' ); ?></a></div>
  			<div><?php printf( __( 'Theme: %1$s by %2$s.', 'writr' ), 'Writr', '<a href="https://wordpress.com/themes/" rel="designer">WordPress.com</a>' ); ?></div>
  		</div><!-- .site-info -->

  to

  <div class="site-info">
  			<?php do_action( 'writr_credits' ); ?>
  			<div><a href="https://www.ads-software.com/" title="<?php esc_attr_e( 'A Semantic Personal Publishing Platform', 'writr' ); ?>" rel="generator"><?php printf( __( 'Proudly powered by %s', 'writr' ), 'WordPress' ); ?></a></div>
  			<div><?php printf( __( 'Theme: %1$s by %2$s.', 'writr' ), 'Writr', '<a href="https://wordpress.com/themes/" rel="designer">WordPress.com</a>' ); ?></div>
  				<div>Maintained by <a href="https://surpriseazwebservices.com/">Surprise AZ Web Services</a></div>
  		</div><!-- .site-info -->

• content.php – Changed the excerpt only on search pages line from
  <?php if ( is_search() ) : // Only display Excerpts for Search ?>
  to
  <?php if ( is_search() || is_front_page() ) : // Only display Excerpts for Search and home ?>

Whether I’m using the child theme or parent theme, the site displays the same now (other than the excerpts vs full content, and the favicon).

I’m seeing a much cleaner looking version of the site with the sidebar intact. Is that because you reverted to the previous version of Writr or because it’s fixed, I wonder?

You’re right it does look a little better.
Previously I think there may have been some inconsistencies with my child theme files, but I since updated them to match the latest version of the theme’s files as I mentioned in my previous comment.
Now I am able to get the widgets in the sidebar as I want them, but the header (image, site title, site tagline) and footer (WP, theme dev. credits) don’t show up where they belong.
However, this problem is no longer specific to the child theme – the site looks the same regardless of whether I have the parent or the child theme active.

the header (image, site title, site tagline) and footer (WP, theme dev. credits) don’t show up where they belong.

Oizuled – did you solve these remaining issues? The header, site title, tagline, and footer, all look correctly placed in Firefox 31 and Chrome 36 on my end, on this site: https://surpriseazmom.com/

Would it be possible to upload a screenshot of what you see, to help in troubleshooting?

Here’s a guide on how to make a screenshot, if you’re not sure: https://en.support.wordpress.com/make-a-screenshot/

You can upload the screenshot – in a graphic format like JPG, PNG, or PDF – in your Media Library, and provide a link so I can see it, or upload it with a service like Imgur or Snaggy.

At the same time, could you let me know in what browser and version you’re seeing these issues.