susanwrotethis

Hi Rodrigo, a colleague of mine encountered a similar error recently and we found out some critical files were missing. Here’s one tip that may help you figure it out.

Look for the wp-config.php file on your server. In it there’s a line that looks like:

define( ‘wp_debug’, false );

Change that false to true, save the file, and refresh your web site. With any luck, this will generate one or more PHP errors that will help figure out what’s wrong.

If this does yield a message, please post it so we can help. Then change the wp_debug value back to false.

Hi there, this isn’t something you can do by changing a control in the Customizer, but you can do it by adding a few lines of custom CSS. Go into the Customizer and look for the Additional CSS section. Copy and paste this CSS code to start:

/* Main nav bar color */
#access {
background: green;
}

/* Submenu color */
#access ul ul a {
background: red;
}

/* Hover color */
#access li:hover > a,
#access ul ul :hover > a {
background: blue;
}

Where the words “green”, “red” and “blue” appear, add the hex code for the color you want to use. Then save your work. If you don’t want to change the hover or submenu background colors, you can delete those lines of CSS.

Hi there, the white screen usually signals an error somewhere in the PHP code that is causing the site to not display.

If you have access to the WordPress files on the server, look for the wp-config.php. In the file you should see a line that says something like:

define( ‘wp_debug’, false);

Change that false to true and save the file. Reload the site and you will probably see at least one PHP error. If you tell us what it is, we may be able to tell you what it means. Change the value of wp_debug back to false when you’re done.

If you don’t have access to the file, you will need to contact your hosting service for assistance.

If you want to know more about WP Debug, there’s related information in the Codex: https://codex.www.ads-software.com/WP_DEBUG

Hi, can you post a URL so we can see what it looks like?

Without looking at it, I’m wondering if you can use CSS to hide the box. It won’t remove it physically, but it won’t display on the screen.

Hi there, is this happening just when you’re logged in and working in the admin area, or does it happen on the front end of the site as well?

What I’m seeing from the screenshot is that the CSS for the admin menu isn’t working. There are several possible reasons, but the one I’ve seen most often is when a page loading over SSL is trying to use a stylesheet that isn’t loading over SSL.

You might try deactivating your plugins one by one and seeing if that causes the problem to go away. If you noticed the problem suddenly started after activating or updating a particular plugin, that may point to where the problem is.

Basically, the way this works is that the red Repair button is just an item in the site menu that’s been styled to look different from the other menu items. Instead of containing a link to a page the way the other menu items do, the Repair button triggers a JavaScript that reveals the Repair menu, which is hidden.

The cellphonerepair site is using a WordPress theme that appears to have been built just for them. Perhaps someone can suggest a theme or plugin that will do this for you without custom coding. I haven’t tested it, but it looks like Max Mega Menu (https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/megamenu/) does something like what you need. You’d still need custom CSS to make it look the way you want.

If you can’t find something already built, perhaps the best bet is to build a child theme with a custom header and menu that will do that for you.

Ah, yes, I see that now. It’s so faint it doesn’t even show on some laptops. If you use

hr {display: none;}

all horizontal rules will be hidden on your site, which won’t be a problem if you’re not planning to use an <hr> anywhere else on your site.

Hello! That’s a nice site you have.

While the table-based layout mentioned above will work, it’s highly discouraged for various reasons, including:

1) Tables tend to display badly on small mobile devices.
2) It’s bad in terms of accessibility. When assistive technology encounters tables, it will expect the content to be data — basically, something like a spreadsheet. When the content is something different, it can be very confusing.

If you are familiar with custom CSS, you can put <div> tags around the content you want to appear in columns and add styles to set the width and position.

Another alternative, and much easier for people who don’t work with CSS, is to use a plugin. A quick search turned up Column Shortcodes (https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/column-shortcodes/), which I haven’t used but appears to be well regarded. If you search “page columns” or “columns” in the plugin repository you’ll find several other plugins that could do the job.

Hi Terry, do you have a URL you can post so we can take a look at it? There are very likely ways to do this with a little CSS and maybe a second header image. If we see the site and know what theme you’re using, we’re better able to provide specific information.

You may also want to check out Underscores (https://underscores.me), which will generate the basic files and functions for a WordPress theme. You can then customize the HTML, CSS and other code to make it look and behave like the template. You can find related information at https://www.sitepoint.com/wordpress-theme-development-getting-started-with-underscores/.

Whether turning the template into a theme or modifying Underscores to turn it into something like the template is the better approach depends on your individual skill set and what functionality or features are involved. I personally prefer Underscores because people with expertise in theming have already done a lot of the work for me. It saves me time and reduces the chances of coding errors.

See if this works:

.tc-header {border-bottom: none;}

Hi there, if you’re using multisite you should be able to use a single installation of the theme on all of them. First, go to the Network Admin > Themes and make sure the theme of your choice is network-activated. This will make it available on all the sites you create. You’ll still need to activate it on each site manually, though.

If you have all 60 sites set up and are trying to change the theme on all of them at once, I don’t know that there’s a plugin to do that. I recently had to do this on a multisite and wrote a script for it.

Here’s a URL with related information: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/how-to-change-the-default-theme-to-existing-sites-on-multisite.

Hi, Iain, I’m trying to think of a scenario where activating a plugin after a site is built rather than before makes a difference, and I’m drawing a blank. Before you go through all that work … do you have caching of any kind on your sites? The reason I’m asking is that if you deactivated plugins on these sites, the responsiveness may still appear to be broken because older versions of the pages are cached.

If you’re sure that’s not a factor and you have a small site you want to rebuild to confirm that it resolves the issue, you can certainly try it. I’d just hate for you to do an enormous amount of work only to find it didn’t fix the problem.

Hi Chris, if MU Domain Mapping has been working for you otherwise, it’s not necessarily wrong/bad and in need of immediate replacement. It’s true that domain mapping is gradually evolving. Multisite itself is continuing to evolve, and the documentation the evolution is very thin indeed.

During a discussion of multisites a few months back I heard this recommended as an alternative to MU Domain Mapping: https://github.com/humanmade/Mercator. You may want to check it out.

The sysadmin I work with played with it a bit and concluded that we weren’t ready to make the move ourselves, but we plan to revisit the issue every half-year or so to determine when we feel ready to make changes.

I’m running new installs without that $base = ‘/’; and without breaking anything, so I think you can comment it out and see what happens.