3NT

I’ve only told what I did. It doesn’t make sense why it work but it did. And another thing, I don’t use child themes on those sites, not sure would it made any difference.

The reason I started with php because on one site I could not login, on another – attempts to update led to some strange messages. Switching off plugins didn’t help.
So, in short:
1. I tried php 8x just to see maybe I missed some alerts and I need higher version (happened once before). Didn’t work and on the site I was doing it all the text disappeared.
2. rolled back to 7.3x php, just trying to eliminate easy things I could do myself before contacting support. To my surprise all the problems disappeared.
3. I happily reinstalled wp 5.82 (meaning through admin panel) and updated some of the plugins (update happened this weekend, around the same time hosting switched to 7.4).
4. I switched back php to 7.4

I don’t know why it worked because I kind of ended up with the same configuration as when I started.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 4 months ago by 3NT.

Did you check your php version?

I’ve just had some problem with several sites (not colourmag) that are on the same hosting. They were in different state of upgrade. And you know what helped, switching on php version forward and backward.

Not sure what was wrong, I was in a process of updating and left some stuff till Monday but Monday morning I’ve seen problems. And I knew that one of the site was totally updated on Friday. What I think happened is that the hosting was doing some service, maybe installing some new php, maybe stitching all the accounts to newer version and it caused the problems.

Anyway when I switched to version 8something, the content disappeared. 7.4x was causing the problems, 7.3x – everything was OK. But new WordPress sais we need 7.4x. So I rolled back, reinstalled new wordpress then put 7.4x back and everything became ok. Strange… It reminds me that old anecdote about “we’ll open the widows, we’ll close the winwow and everything surely will work”…

2iamnikki
…The books are other settings… – what are those?

What about other widgets? Are they ok? Did you check Classic Widget plugins forum, whether anybody else have the same problem?

IF other widgets on your site are ok – we’ll wait for the theme creators to make a fix. Meanwhile you might use normal widgets for adverts (I know, it’s a pain… ) and me – I’ll wait for theme upgrade…

2ejdiariodigital

When did you change the widget’s config. last time?

I had something similar after WordPress update when they forced block editing in widgets. I would not even notice it because everything was working on the website. But I had to change the advert and saw this problem. I made a search and a lot of people with different themes complained about it. Solution was either learn to use blocks in widgets and redo everything on the website or find something that enforce classic editor in widgets.

Check it out if your situation is the same as mine was. My solution was simple. Since I hate block editing I already had plugin that disable it. And those guys were so good they made option “disable block editing in widgets” so fast, that by the time I found the problem, the only thing I had to do was just to opt in this box…

1. What did you update, the theme? I’m still running older version of CororMag, kind of afraid to update to fast.

2. Did you have problems with widgets after WordPress update, when they made widgets into “block editing”. What was your solution? Maybe that one is interfering with last update somehow.

I’ve got Disable Guttenberg plugin with option “disable block editor in widgets” opted in. It helped problems with widget last time, I wander if it will work now…. I probably will wait for more info before updating…

Last update solved it. Thanks!

Yes, that line exists. But there are no way to go straight to the admin panel. Only if you create new post/page.

To be honest, I never use that menu because those options are not frequently used and could be accessed from left menu anyway.

I meant the moment you activate plugin. Then I do not have a choice, this screen is loading automatically and it covers everything, i.e. left menu, top menu and there are no escape.

Thanks. This particular thing is fixed.

Oh, funny thing, I would not even notice the problem if we didn’t move the site to a new theme and now I’m checking a lot of things with the old posts. So, it might be a lot of people that don’t know they have the same problem.

Yes, you’r right. I’ve just published a new post and everything is OK. The problem is only with the old posts.

Simple re-saving didn’t help yesterday, but if I cut+past the description somewhere and back (it might be some funny Windows “helping” trick) it does the trick.

Thanks a lot. At least we know now what was it about…

1. …” all the while thinking that you had troubles with title because of what you said:…”
It was in the beginning. The timeline was like that:
a) I updated, everything disappeared, i posted here and went to sleep
b) in the morning you’ve already answered, I opened the site, to see what options are checked (according your recommendations) then I saw that the titles are there, descriptions are there, but in the code text for meta-description is taken from the excerpts. It’s kind of puzzling, but myabe plugin needs some time to regenerate everything after update?!? The site doesn’t have cash, so normally the changes appears right away.

Sorry for the confusion, but it’s a live forum, sometimes things are changing after the posts are published… but the problem still exists…

2. …”options like “Use Title Rewriter” and “Force Rewrite titles”. If you don’t have problems with titles, then you don’t need to do anything with these options.”…
In the plugin-admin section the description under “Use Title Rewriter says it should be always on. So I didn’t uncheck it before.
– Just tried it – it only affects the title

3. “Why don’t you save the post once?”
– it happens on the old posts that are already published
– that’s exactly what I was doing yesterday for the whole day, checking different boxes, adding-removing descriptions and excerpts, everything in different combinations, saving and looking the updatet post and looking at the coed. And after all that I wrote my previous post.

4. Option ” autogenerate description for all post types, if no SEO description is set for any post.
Just found this option. Tried to uncheck it. The situation didn’t change. With unchecked box in the post-admin I still see the part of the article in faded font in meta-description box. And in the code the description is still coming from the excerpt.

——
Anyway, if you’ve got any more ideas, please, let me know. Even if this problem comes from the theme (it might, I agree), we’re not going to change it. The theme authors… I’ll try to write there but I doubt they’re going to look for the fix, unless it’s easy and obvious.

Meanwhile, I found the old version. I’ll roll back and see what’s going on here. Maybe it will be more reports from the community and fix will be found. Or maybe wordpress will issue the update and the problem will disappear (you would laugh but last year with the old theme I used 3 times there were problems that were coming with wordpress update and were disappearing after next wordpress updates…).

1. PHP (…”always advisable to run newer versions of PHP”…)
Changed to 7.1. Didn’t help
1a. …”If you are running an outdated version, it is a security risk.”…
Tell it to hostgator (sarcasm towards my hoster, they used to do updates in proper time but not anymore). Their default version is 5.6. They offer 7.0 and 7.1 with huge thick warning “use it at your own risk”…

2. …”I am not sure how you are running the older version of the plugin when it has been disabled from download on WordPress.”…
Imagine the were the times, not so long ago, when the plugin was thee… It’s not like somebody was sending message “disable the plugin because it was deleted from depository”. It was working perfect. And when we moved to colormag couple of weeks ago, it was still working ok. I even didn’t know plugin was out of circulation..

3. “Can you switch to the default wordpress theme and check”
Scary. I looked at preview and it shows total mess. I’m afraid switching will totally remove all the settings. I’ll see if I’ll have courage to do it at night, when there are no traffic.

4. …”seeing titles for your existing posts?”..
Yes. I said it before. Title in the admin and title in the code, as it should be.

5. “Are you saying that you are seeing descriptions but they are shown from excerpt? … did you have the description filled in earlier against the older version’s description field in the plugin metabox?”
Yes, and it’s kind of obvious as I’m talking about upgrade rather then new installation. And the box was called “description” rather then “metabox”.

6. I dug out old post where title and description was not set. It looks like that, in shady font I could see the title and the beginning of the post, but i could not cut it o so. In the code title shows OK, but description is still comes from excerpt.But if I remove excerpt, the text from metabox is shown in the code as description (it could be my own) and the same text is shown as excerpt.
— So, does it suppose to do that? Perhaps, they didn’t think that somebody might want to have different excerpt and description…

First of all, thank you for the quick response.

1. the site runs on wordpress 5.3.2, theme colormag (free). We recently migrated from non responsive theme and I still sorting out old content. If I new it would be such a mess with Platinum SEO update, I would keep the older version, for some time at least.

2. “Use Title Rewriter” was on after update (as I mentioned before, plugin automatically switched off)

3. “Force Rewrite Title”
What I did was switching all the plugins off and switching it back. I had situation couple of times when this action helped. Not now. But at the moment I eventually could see old descriptions in the admin of the posts. To be honest, yesterday even excerpts wasn’t shown on the homepage. I went to sleep and in the morning excerpts on the homepage were OK. Strange?!? (I don’t have any cash plugin because our traffic is not that big and I’ve never seen the hosting cashing our website)

Now, even with all the plugins off situation is the same:
– I see description in admin
– in the code meta-name description is taken from excerpt.
– using “Force Rewrite Title” doesn’t affect a thing the only time I see the difference is when both options are off

4. “…follow the FAQs…” “switch off before update”
Well, update has already been done. Once again, there was no warning… or I would not be here asking questions. I didn’t switch plugin off before update because usually it is not required.

5. <?php wp_head(); ?>
It looks like that in this theme:
…
wp_head();
?>
</head>
Similar but not identical as in FAQs. Somehow I think, <?php a long way ahead do the trick and it’s the same code.

6. You didn’t answer part of my original question, is there any way to get back to old version?

7. I’m going to check the situation with php version. Somehow the hosting stopped updating it automatically. Then I’ll see if it do the trick.

PS. Not related but since we’re already talking… There is a problem with encoding on https://techblissonline.com/platinum-seo-pack-faq/ . Symbols like a€? or a€? are popping up in the text. I had similar situation once. The site was with UTF-8 extended (not sure if it’s proper name) and it was moved to new hosting. Hosting did the moving, in the end everything was on UTF-8 which is slightly not compatible with UTF-8 extended…