Still no General Options menu with Ocean Extra 2.4.1

Hi,

It does appear that a lot of the customizer settings are missing if you are using a child theme. Changing from the child theme to main theme brings those settings back.

Alas, not for me. I tried switching back to the main theme (as mentioned above). Many of the changes to the customizer are still invisible, and the site becomes unusable due to the large visual changes that accompany the switch.

That said, I cannot imagine that having a child theme should disable things in the customizer, but I could be wrong. I am not an expert.

This is the difference I see between the child theme, and only the main theme being active. (the same theme checks still appear to exist in the Ocean Extra plugin as they did before):

https://imgur.com/Ni6yGsr

Very interesting.

Given I tried this before and nothing changed, I figured I would do it again, capture the menus similar to the way you did, and show the issue. But things were different this time.

When I changed themes from the child theme to the main OceanWP theme before, it took only a second or two. And in that case the menus did NOT change.

This time when I changed themes there was a long delay – 25-30 seconds, perhaps – and the menus DID change as you suggested. And when I changed back to the child theme, the menus reverted back to the more limited version.

Here are the menus as I saw them: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19RtLaLmZT12UKTlCE294QvtOWIX8G4dg/view?usp=sharing

Note that there is still no General Options menu in either case, but there is now a Pages & Special Pages menu, and the page title controls are under that menu.

When I changed to the main theme just after the release of 4.0.0, the menus did NOT change as far as I can recall, and they definitely did NOT change this morning when I tried it again after the bug fix release.

So now I have two issues:

1. Why don’t I see the revised customizer menus when using the child theme?
2. Is there supposed to be a General Options menu somewhere in the system or not? The documentation claims it should be there and that is where to find the Page Title controls, but these new menus seem to have it under Pages & Special Pages. I am confused.

We need the full customizer to appear (and work!) with child themes. Clearly I am not the only person experiencing this issue.

Thank you, momofone, for causing me to try this a second time today. I cannot explain it, but clearly something worked differently this time.

OceanWP folks: Please address questions 1 and 2 above. These need fixing, one way or another.

Hello Everyone,
@jrpstonecarver,
@jacquidervan,

Thank you for reaching out,

Regarding the page title, have you tried to disable other plugins (clear all level caches again) and recheck the issue with activating any plugin each time?
If not, please do this and keep us posted.

If you still cannot see options, even after activating the child theme (without customizations affecting the customizer, which is not the case), please go to WP Dashboard > OceanWP > OceanWP Panel > Customizer, and ensure all options are enabled: https://postimg.cc/zLxQvf5V (this feature is not new).

After that in all cases with the main theme or child theme you’ll see all settings: https://postimg.cc/KK1WK2Yf.

Regarding finding the “General Options” it is on the first page:
1. Click here on your website home page: https://postimg.cc/5H9ndmwz

2. Then you’ll see the general settings and page title settings in these tabs: https://postimg.cc/zbrKWCjB

______

If you can provide more details about the specific features you’re working with and the exact changes you’re trying to make, I can offer more tailored guidance. (share screenshots from them, or share a short video so we can understand it better)

One thing to keep in mind is that caching issues can sometimes prevent changes from being reflected immediately. I’ve personally encountered issues with content and style caching on certain ISPs. I recommend trying to access your site from a different device or using a different internet connection. Additionally, it’s a good idea to disable caching on your staging site. The Jetpack plugin might also be contributing to caching on your site.

I hope it helps.
Best Regards

Thanks for the reply. For me, reverting the staging site to 4.0.0 of the theme and 2.4 of Ocean Extra brings the customizer settings back with the child theme active. It is the newer update 4.0.1 and 2.4.1 which turns them off.

I tested with all plugins disabled and refreshing all caches.

Error log from yesterday if that helps:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Failed opening required ‘/nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-content/themes/oceanwp/inc/themepanel/theme-panel.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/share/pear/php:/usr/share/php’) in /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-content/themes/oceanwp/inc/helpers.php:4973\nStack trace:\n#0 /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(324): oceanwp_includes(”)\n#1 /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(348): WP_Hook->apply_filters(false, Array)\n#2 /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-includes/plugin.php(517): WP_Hook->do_action(Array)\n#3 /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php(45): do_action(‘admin_init’)\n#4 {main}\n thrown in /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-content/themes/oceanwp/inc/helpers.php on line 4973, referer: https://cabworksstg.wpenginepowered.com/wp-admin/update-core.php?action=do-theme-upgrade

Edited for clarity.

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by momofone.
• This reply was modified 1 month ago by momofone.

Here’s the result of my research:

Per your request I deactivated all of my plugins on my staging site and tried the customizer. At that point, the Pages & Special Pages menu choice appeared. In fact. So I assumed it was one of my plugins that was causing the problem. To determine which one, I activated them one at a time, and rechecked the customizer after each one. It was exactly one plugin that caused the menus to change: Ocean Extra version 2.4.1. When I activate it, the menus go back to the much reduced version.

Menus with Ocean Extra 2.4.1 active: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mQ9Uy3a5TQhhDm73aBl0wOfy9hT5nlWY/view?usp=sharing

Menus with Ocean Extra 2.4.1 deactivated: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RxB0dKnXH33h9Ss4EoYA__n1hW3VHUEA/view?usp=sharing

This was repeatable. I could deactivate Ocean Extra, see the customizer menu change, and then reactivate it and see the menus go back.

All of this was with our child theme in place.

There is – VERY CLEARLY – some interaction with Ocean Extra that is breaking the menus.

You ask what I am trying to do. I’ll make it clear:

1. I need the full menu set that comes with OceanWP to work with our child theme and your own plugins. This is non-negotiable. If we cannot make that work I am in a world of hurt.
2. Your documentation – here: https://docs.oceanwp.org/article/166-disabling-the-page-title – explicitly describes the menu choices “Appearance > Customize > General Options > Page Title” which is something I have NEVER SEEN. Now I see the Page Title choices in the new “Pages and Special Pages” menu, but with Ocean Extra active I cannot see that menu. I want to know if the docs URL above is inaccurate (and needs revision) or if there is more to the menus that I have never seen. And again please note, NEITHER of the images linked above includes a menu choice named “General Options“. So has my system never shown me the full menus available with OceanWP? Or have they changed and the docs page is simply out of date? I am confused.

That’s it. I want accurate documentation and software that does what it claims it will do. The rest is on me.

Hi @jrpstonecarver,

Hope all is well on your end.

I’m afraid there has been a misunderstanding here and a mix of topics, so if you would allow me to clarify some things out, and I thank you for your patience in advance.

#1 Topic: General Options panel not displaying when using a child theme with parent theme OceanWP being 3.6.1 and lower, and using Ocean Extra 2.4.0 and above

#2 Topic: General Options panel not displaying when using OceanWP 4.0.0 and above and Ocean Extra 2.4.0 and above. However, you are seeing a few additional panels, like Site Style & Settings, Pages & Special Pages, SEO Settings, Performance, and Site Preloader.

#3 Topic: some instances utilizing the child theme, OceanWP 4.0.0 and above, as well as Ocean Extra 2.4.0 and above, are not seeing the Pages & Special Pages panel in the Customizer.

The #1 topic is indeed an issue on some instances, which has been addressed and the official release is expected on October 28th.

The #2 topic is not an issue and is related to the entire Customizer upgrade. The General Options panel was removed in favor of additional smaller panels, to break down options for a more intuitive and user-friendly approach.
While we’re still updating the old documentation, the entire new Customizer is covered, with links present for each section in the Customizer: https://docs.oceanwp.org/category/894-oceanwp-customizer

All of this has been explained in the first announcement in August, and all news and info distributed via all notification options we have in place. While it will possibly take time to get used to the new looks and reorganized settings, the Customizer Search might be your best friend until then, which you can enable via OceanWP > OceanWP Panel > Customizer: https://docs.oceanwp.org/article/812-customizer-oceanwp-panel

For the topic #3, it is indeed an issue reported by several users on some instances utilizing a child theme. Even though we were unable to replicate this on our end at all or with other users utilizing a child theme, we have revisited the logic for Customizer panels and some of the forum users who reported this problem as well have been kind enough to test the upcoming dev versions.

If you would like to test issues described in topics #1 and #3 with the upcoming versions on a staging environment:
OceanWP 4.0.2 dev version: https://github.com/oceanwp/oceanwp/tree/rc-4.0.2
Ocean Extra 2.4.2 dev version: https://github.com/oceanwp/ocean-extra/tree/rc-2.4.2

You’re probably all familiar with how to use files from GitHub, but I’m going to include a short guide just in case:
#1 download both .zip files by hitting the green CODE button and use option Download ZIP
#2 unzip on your PC
#3 replace files in your staging website’s wp-content/themes/oceanwp and wp-content/plugins/ocean-extra with files from respective folders you previously extracted on your PC. You can use sFTP (like FileZilla) or the File Manager from your hosting account panel.

Do not upload the zip files directly and try to install the usual way because these will install in different folders, thus you’ll just end up with duplicates. That’s the reason for the method described above.

I would also like to apologize on behalf of my colleague who misunderstood your query due to similar topics in place and hope it will not affect your experience with OceanWP.

In case my explanations are confusing or require clarification, kindly let me know and I’ll do my best to provide more accurate answers.

And just to confirm something, your child theme doesn’t contain any copied customizer files, correct?

Thank you for your understanding, and your time in advance

Hi @jacquidervan,

On the other topic you confirmed all is good with the dev versions regarding the missing panels in the child theme, and thank you for that once again ??

I’m here to ask you about this error:

PHP Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Failed opening required ‘/nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-content/themes/oceanwp/inc/themepanel/theme-panel.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/share/pear/php:/usr/share/php’) in /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-content/themes/oceanwp/inc/helpers.php:4973\nStack trace:\n#0 /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(324): oceanwp_includes(”)\n#1 /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(348): WP_Hook->apply_filters(false, Array)\n#2 /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-includes/plugin.php(517): WP_Hook->do_action(Array)\n#3 /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php(45): do_action(‘admin_init’)\n#4 {main}\n thrown in /nas/content/live/cabworksstg/wp-content/themes/oceanwp/inc/helpers.php on line 4973

If you clear the error log, does it still happen on your end? It could have been a temporary problem present only during the theme update while all files have been updated, but I want to ensure this has been a one time problem and not still present.

Thank you
Thank

Thank you @wpfleek for the reply.

Thank you for the clarifications and explanations.

On the question of getting new versions from GIT, I am honestly not familiar with that, and I haven’t got the time to become familiar with it right now. I was a techy years ago, but that was all pre-GIT, and I’ve been retired for a fair while now. I could figure it out if needed, but not quickly thanks to other commitments.

Your post isn’t clear on whether or not the release coming on the 28th will fix the issue of the full customizer not displaying for some child theme users or not. You say it is being tested by some folks, and that’s great, but it doesn’t seem to be a sure thing that its even fixed yet. Is that correct, or is there a possible fix for it coming on the 28th?

Finally, you as a difficult question: does our child theme contain any copied customizer files?

I honestly have no idea. I inherited this site from someone else. The child them was created long before I arrived, and I have never figured out what it contains or how it was created. I know essentially nothing about it, and spend nearly all of my time dealing with content updates, not coding related changes.

Can you tell me how to determine what is in the child theme? Even if that means just pointing me at a good document about them that I can read and deal with. Without that sort of thing, our child them will remain a mystery to me for the foreseeable future.

Sorry to be a problem.

Hi @jrpstonecarver,

Since the majority of users who experienced the same problem as you did performed tests with a positive outcome, yes, the release on Monday Oct 28th will indeed resolve the problem you reported.

Inheriting website maintenance for a website you know nothing about really puts you in an ungrateful situation. There are indeed many way to check, but let’s start with the less complicated one that involves the old look and compare method ??

So, you can use FTP or the Files Manager to check the inners of your child theme, or you can download it to your PC and use a program like Visual Studio Code to open the folder and preview files individually.

You will search in your website folder wp-content/themes/. The usual child theme folder name is oceanwp-child-theme or oceanwp-child-theme-master, but since you can give the child theme folder any name you want, look for a folder that doesn’t have a standard theme name, like oceanwp, twentytwenty, twentytwentyone etc.

You will compare it with the standard child theme, which contains nothing except the code to inherit all options from the parent theme: https://github.com/oceanwp/oceanwp-child-theme

If your child theme contains any folders, it’s important for you to check which folders those are and which files do they contain. Since that’s the most important part right now, let’s focus solely on that. You can also share screenshots and I can tell you if the child theme contains files usually have no business in a child theme (like non-template files, such as Customizer files).

This is the best I can do to help you figure out some things fast

Thanks @wpfleek.

I will need the weekend to do what you’ve asked. Hopefully whoever created this child theme didn’t copy anything important, but I will see what I can do.

But don’t expect it to be done as you suggest. My time in tech was dominated by things like vi and diff. I will get the answers, including lists of files in the main theme and in the child theme, and hopefully if there are any duplicated files I will figure that out.

More in a couple of days. Thanks again.

Hi, @wpfleek

This turns out to be hilarious.

Thanks to your directions, I found our child theme and had a good, close look. But it didn’t take that long because it’s essentially empty. No, really. It contains exactly 4 files:

• functions.php – which contains almost nothing. 3 short functions, one of which looks to be an for dealing with an obscure error issue in Contact Form 7. The other two seem to be related to making sure all the existing OceanWP things stay in place.
• README.md – which contains only comments and instructions… nothing that actually does anything
• style.css – contains only comments
• screenshot.png – contains the theme image, which shows up in the customizer page where you select the theme you want to use

That’s it. There are no other files at all. If you want to see them yourself, here’s a zip file containing the files.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qBI-KQs6_XtPtomhznMCpb5fk03g_ozr/view?usp=sharing

There is obviously nothing of particular interest or value in there, so sharing it is not a problem. Feel free to grab a copy if you want access to it for testing.

But given what’s in there, I have no idea why we actually have a child theme. I can imagine a couple of possibilities:

• The creator decided we needed it for the one php function dealing with Contact Form 7
• The creator created the child theme thinking he would need to do customizations and didn’t wind up needing any
• The creator wanted to have an obvious theme choice for future maintainers (like me) in the theme choice screen

Whatever the reason, none of it really matters. It’s all dirt simple and there is nothing in it to get in the way of OceanWP’s code.

What interests me more is how an essentially empty child theme causes OceanWP’s code to fail to display the full customizer menu. I can’t imagine anything in that child theme interfering with something important, but I could be wrong. I guess I’ll learn more when the new version comes out in a few days.

Thanks again for the pointers. I’ve learned a couple of interesting things, and I need to research that contact form 7 issue to see if it’s still really a thing or not. The URL given in the comment no longer works, so it will take a bit of digging, but that’s my job.

Hi again,?@wpfleek

This morning I can confirm that the new version of Ocean Extra does, in fact, make the new customizer visible on our website with our (empty) child theme in place.

Thanks again for your help with this issue.

Hi @jrpstonecarver,

Thanks for your patience on everything, including my belayed reply. I got caught up with some other things.

I’m happy to hear things have been resolved and hope you’ll now start enjoying the new Customizer in full ??

If you have any suggestions / recommendations, feel free to share your thoughts.

As far as your child theme goes, you’re in luck because it was used the correct way. And judging by you’re saying, it was used to add a custom snippets for a function related to third-party plugins. That’s what the child themes are for, so it’s not entirely empty ?? But if you do not need those functionalities further, you can either delete them or keep using the parent theme. The decision is entirely yours.

Child themes can cause issues if used in incorrect way. For example, I’ve seen users copy all parent theme files into the child theme. In this way, the child theme stops receiving updates through the parent theme because absolutely all files have been “locked” to that specific version. There are things that you can place in a child theme, like the snippet in your child theme, or for example a file template (php) if you wish to override it. In case of the OceanWP theme, such templates you can experiment with and override are placed in the partials and woocommerce folders.

If you’d like to know more about child themes, whenever you have time, you can check our documentation: https://docs.oceanwp.org/

Thank you once more for reporting a problem you experienced, and especially for following up, but most importantly, for using OceanWP ??