Stray symbols appearing in WordPress byline after upgrade to 6.5.2

  • Resolved jpicerno

    (@jpicerno)


    7 months, 2 weeks ago

    Hi. I’m trying to solve a minor but really annoying glitch after upgrading to WordPress 6.5.2. Specifically, several random characters are now appearing in the byline for each blog post on my website. That is, these characters now appear to the immediate right of every byline:

    ‘, “); ?>

    I’m using the Twenty Twelve theme, ver. 1.5. This theme has been customized a bit, but it was working fine prior to the upgrade. I’m pretty sure there’s a new glitch in the CSS code, but I can’t find the offending line(s). Any suggestion/guidance, if only on which theme file to look at, would be greatly appreciated!!!

    • This topic was modified 7 months, 2 weeks ago by jpicerno.

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

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Moderator t-p

    (@t-p)

    This may be a plugin or theme conflict. Please attempt to disable all plugins, and use one of the default (Twenty*) themes. If the problem goes away, enable them one by one to identify the source of your troubles.

    If you can install plugins, install and activate “Health Check”: https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/health-check/
    It will add some additional features under the menu item under Tools > Site Health.
    On its troubleshooting tab, you can Enable Troubleshooting Mode. This will disable all plugins, switch to a standard WordPress theme (if available), allow you to turn your plugins on and off and switch between themes, without affecting normal visitors to your site. This allows you to test for various compatibility issues.
    There’s a more detailed description about how to use the Health Check plugin and its Troubleshooting Mode at https://make.www.ads-software.com/support/handbook/appendix/troubleshooting-using-the-health-check/

    The current version of Twenty Twelve is 4.2, so you are miles behind. And if you have also customised it, it will be difficult to help you. Because what you see in the source code is probably due to an error in the PHP of your customisations. It may say somewhere in there

    <?php// edit_post_link( __( 'Edit', 'twentytwelve' ), '<span class="edit-link">', '</span>' ); ?>

    which is now recognised as an error by the current PHP version. Therefore, take a closer look at the source code of your customisations to the theme.

    Thread Starter jpicerno

    (@jpicerno)

    I just resolved the issue. Turns out that it was some conflict with the version of PHP I was using. I upgraded to 8.0, which seemed to generate the extra characters. As a test, downgrading to 7.4 or upgrading to 8.1 (the latest version) fixed the issue. Thanks for directing me to PHP as a solution, threadi. Much appreciated!

    Thread Starter jpicerno

    (@jpicerno)

    Actually, it’s only partially fixed. Using PHP 8.1 removes the extra characters on the summary version of each post, but when you click “Continue reading” the extra characters show up at the bottom. Partial solution is progress, but more R&D is needed. Thanks!

    As already mentioned, the spelling of the PHP code in the template of the theme must be adapted. Changing to other PHP versions will not help.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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