Only displays text from site – new install

  • Help! I can’t get any themes to properly display on remote browsers.

    I’ve been trying to set up an Ubuntu LAMP WP server for testing now for two weeks! Every time I try, it goes bad at the end.

    Once I complete the installation on a local, dedicated Ubuntu 20.04 computer with the latest versions of all software as of today, everything seems to work well. I get to the point where you “finish the install using the wp interface in the browser” and things start to come apart.

    I checked to see if I could access it from a remote browser and the first screen pops up with the “Choose Language” page. It displays fine on the local and the remote browsers.

    Next, using the browser on the local computer, I finish the WP install, starting at the “choose language” page. Everything seems to load fine and the job finishes. Finally, I reboot, just to be sure, and I bring up the web page and the sample website to make sure all is well, and it is.

    Finally I try to access the website from a remote computer on the same local network. Here is where it breaks. The website displays with only text, no style or anything else. I can’t even access the admin page remotely at all.

    I’ve reinstalled the server computer repeatedly, following the directions on the various pages from the digitalocean website, with only one or two minor variations related to creating a secondary user – I didn’t. Instead, I’m running it from the owner ID (the ID acting as root).

    I’ve tried changing permissions in the past, thinking that’s the problem, but that just made it worse. I’m going bald from pulling my hair out in frustration.

    The only other thing I can think of is that I’ve installed the desktop release of Ubuntu 20.04 instead of the server release to get the gui. Was this a catastrophic decision????

    Can anyone help me identify the problem???? It’s been happening consistently!
    I’ll be happy to supply any missing info requested.

    • This topic was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by James Huff. Reason: moved to Localhost Installs since this is a localhost install
Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
  • Tara King

    (@sparklingrobots)

    Hello @cmb42!

    Hmm, this one sounds so frustrating! I’m sorry you’re having this issue.

    It sounds to me like your CSS files aren’t loading, if you’re seeing unstyled text. One thing I’d try in your situation is inspecting the page using developer tools to see which CSS files the page is trying to load (if any) and if there’s anything wrong with those.

    I’m also wondering if there’s an easier way to accomplish a local set-up that would still be sufficient for your purposes (e.g. using VirtualBox). In any case, trying a different kind of local environment might shed some light on the issue you’re having at DigitalOcean.

    You may also want to reach out to DigitalOcean to see if they have any tips for set up on their servers.

    Good luck!

    Hi @cmb42,

    I tested your rule which worked well and there are no issues with it.

    did you get any error messages when you try to browse the site with both rules?

    Firstly, make sure that your site binding is correct with http and https protocols and https binding has the correct certificate.

    you could try to disable the reverse proxy rule and make a test with HTTP to https rule and check what is the issue.

    another thing you could try is to enable the failed request tracing rule in iis and check the cause of the issue.

    Let me know if my answer can help you resolve your issue.

    Regards,

    Lucas

    What are your “Site Address” and “WordPress Address” settings ?

    IF they are something localhost or 127.0.0.1
    then what you are seeing is to be expected, the correct behaviour. That you see the page text and NO styling and NO graphics. This is because while the browser is GIVEN the page contents which includes the text, the browser has to REQUEST the CSS files and images etc, if the URL has localhost then the request stays on the remote computer and is not sent to the LAMP server.

    ONE option is to configure your development server which has the LAMP installed to use a fixed IP address, use this IP in the “Site Address” and “WordPress Address”. Now any browser on the same LAN segment will be able to fetch the CSS etc.

    ANOTHER option is to configure your Apache server to use the “VirtualHost” method for your website. You use your domain name in the settings, even if you have not purchased it !!! This works because this method does NOT use the DNS system. Then you put the domain name into the HOSTS file on your server, and also on any computer on your LAN. If the server has a global IP address then it could be put in the HOSTS file on any computer.
    This is how I develop websites, when it gets uploaded to hosting it barely knows that it has moved, granted that it is a little more involved when using HTTPS which is always the case nowdays, also some features such as SMTP do not get done until hosted.
    Additional details are here:
    https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/vhosts/
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_%28file%29

    Try this.

    -> sudo nano /srv/www/wordpress/wp-config.php

    Scroll down and insert these lines in the appropreat place. Don’t change any thing in these lines

    /* Add any custom values between this line and the “stop editing” line. */

    /* Override the WP_HOME and WP_SITEURL variables to get the current IP address
    * instead of retrieving it from the DB, since this is on a Raspberry Pi */
    define( ‘WP_HOME’, ‘https://’. $_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] . ‘/’);
    define( ‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘https://’. $_SERVER[‘HTTP_HOST’] . ‘/’);

    /* That’s all, stop editing! Happy publishing. */

    Then reboot the systom.

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