Website not viewing properly on mobile devices

  • Okay, I have to confess, I did something highly unusual. Instead of updating my website the normal way, I chose to recreate my new theme at my public URL and then simply switch themes. I did this solely to avoid losing comments on old articles. There was probably a better way to do this, but I thought my method would work.

    Initially I created the new theme, on my sandbox server. I then downloaded a copy to my local computer and uploaded a zipped copy to my admin dashboard. I began recreating the sandbox site on my public server and things were humming along. During this re-development stage, I used the WP Maintenance mode plugin to take the site offline.

    After loading in all of the plugins and recreating a few widgets, etc., things began to take shape. The site looked and performed well, so I took the site live. While it looked great on my desktop, the same can’t be said for other devices.

    The new site is a responsive site, so during development I used the Viewport Resizer Chrome extension, to preview the site on various devices. However after taking the site live, I wanted to view the site on my iPhone and iPad. But when I did so, the site was a hot mess. Initially it was a crazy mix of old and new… the old header, footer and some menu items, along with some of the new stuff.

    Trust me, this is not a cache problem, since I have cleared the cache several times and am able to see changes immediately on all devices.

    I decided to trash my old theme files from the server. While the old stuff no longer displays, the site is still jumbled up and displays menu items, etc., that no longer exists in my new theme.

    I realize that the problems probably stem from not copying over the database files, from the sandbox server. I’m just hoping that there is a way I can fix this without having to go back to square one. I’m also hoping that someone can give me an answer quickly since my site is still in “maintenance” mode.

    Thanks in advance,
    Tim

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Very odd problem, as normally modifying or changing Themes does not involve your database in any way – they’re totally separate.

    Did you by chance change the version of WordPress without doing the “update” properly (e.g. going to /wp-admin/update.php)?

    It almost sounds like your database may either have gotten corrupted, or if switching from an older version of WP to a newer, did not get updated properly (sometimes updating the version requires updating the database as well).

    SO you might try using that link – yourdomain.com/wp-admin/update.php BUT backup your database first using phpMyAdmin if you have it.

    If it were me, as a last resort, (and after backing up my live database) – I would empty the tables and import everything from the sandbox site, assuming you have all the content on your sandbox server. If you go this route, pay attention to how large your database backup file is – very large databases are difficult to restore from (they tend to time out) so if it’s large (over 5MB, which I know doesn’t sound large, but different servers have different limits), then do several smaller partial backups first.

    Thread Starter Tim Blake

    (@tim-blake)

    Thanks Trisha, I did what you recommended and downloaded a copy of my database and then updated wordpress. Unfortunately now, nothing previews on my iPad or iPhone. The page loads but is totally blank. Weird!

    I really can’t import files from my sandbox server, since the two sites are not identical. The sandbox site doesn’t contain any of the posts attached to my public site. That was my main reason for moving the site the way that I did.

    Just to test whether the theme itself might be the problem, I switched to the twenty-fifteen theme. I still get the same results… a blank page. However, if I switch back to “maintenance mode,” the maintenance mode message shows up. Hopefully this gives you a better idea of what’s going on, because I’m clueless.

    Thread Starter Tim Blake

    (@tim-blake)

    Just a follow up question: Could there be something in my stylesheet that is prohibiting the site from displaying on mobile browsers? Again, the site looks fine on multiple browsers on my desktop, but displays nothing on my iPad or iPhone.

    Thread Starter Tim Blake

    (@tim-blake)

    Okay, ignore my previous question. Since a large portion of my new site exists on my development server, I decided to take that site live. Guess what, the site works fine on my iPad and iPhone. So can someone please tell me what I need to do in order to make the public site work like my sandbox site? Is the problem in the database or elsewhere?

    Thread Starter Tim Blake

    (@tim-blake)

    Is there anyone out there who can help me with this issue? I really need an answer.

    Thread Starter Tim Blake

    (@tim-blake)

    I don’t know if this helps any, but the database to my public site has 46 tables. The sandbox database has only 20 tables. The tables don’t even start with the same prefix. Apparently, at some point, I renamed the tables in my old (public) site to have a different prefix.

    PLEASE HELP!!!!

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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