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So I’ll try the old theme in the staging plugin. If it works ok there, I’ll assume it will work OK live.

I’d still like insight on this question: If the old theme does break the site, and I run into the same problem of not being able to change themes from the dashboard, is there another way to change the theme back to something safe?

Thanks for the tips and observations. I’ll give the staging plugin a try.

Since the site was broken anyway, I went ahead and updated to whatever the current number is. It came up nicely, showing Twenty Twenty-Four. But that theme was weird–even had the wrong menu items. And I couldn’t make sense of the customize options. Couldn’t even find how to fix the menu. So I activated that “the simplest” theme from earlier today. It will have to do until I find a current simple theme that lets me reproduce something like the look I had with my old theme.

Thanks for your suggestions and insights.

I tried a “custom plugin” to use the switch_theme() function, but that didn’t do anything. Then I went into the code at my host and renamed the BlogBD. This got rid of the error message and let me get to the themes page, but even after activating another theme I’m getting a blank page now.

Any suggestions?

Where in the code would I set a different active theme? I see where I can delete BlogBD. Do I need to do something to activate a different theme or will WP pick one if I delete BlogBD from the code?

Looks like I’ve broken my site already. I tried to activate BlogBD and got this error:

Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to undefined function register_block_style() in …www/wp-content/themes/blogbd/functions.php:147 Stack trace: #0 …www/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(286): blogbd_register_block_styles() #1 …www/wp-includes/class-wp-hook.php(310): WP_Hook->apply_filters() #2 …www/wp-includes/plugin.php(453): WP_Hook->do_action() #3 …www/wp-settings.php(450): do_action() #4 …www/wp-config.php(90): require_once(‘/webroot/r/e/re…’) #5 …www/wp-load.php(37): require_once(‘/webroot/r/e/re…’) #6 …www/wp-admin/admin.php(31): require_once(‘/webroot/r/e/re…’) #7 …www/wp-admin/edit.php(10): require_once(‘/webroot/r/e/re…’) #8 {main} thrown in …www/wp-content/themes/blogbd/functions.php on line 147

WP won’t let get to the themes page to deactivate it. I guess I go into the code at my host and delete that theme? I get the same error when I try to edit the code from inside WP.

Once I solve that, maybe I should just go with thesimplest until I can update WP and php. Assuming that won’t break the site.

When I go in to edit the home page, it doesn’t show any option about comments on the right. That’s the problem. I guess that’s another problem with this theme (beside the text-wrapping bug Justin suggested in my other thread.

I’ll have to look for another theme. Problem is, I’ve have trouble getting some to download. I think because the site is still at WP 4.9. But I’m afraid to update it with my child theme based on the old simpleplaintxt theme, which was old when I adapted it 10+ years ago. So I guess I need to find a theme that’s old enough that it will download to 4.9 but not so old that it will break the site. What I liked about The Simplest is that it seemed like it would be fairly easy to recreate the look of my current theme.

Thanks for the insights and suggestions.

Thanks. That’s good to know about the “bug” possibility. And your comments about the role of sidebars reinforce where I was starting to go.

Thanks, Justin.

I thought about trying to find an older theme, but as you note, there’s the updating issue. I’ve not updated WP and php on the site because I didn’t want the old theme to break things.

I was assuming I wanted responsive until I saw what it does. I end up with a silly one-letter-per-line down the left side of the word-wrapped image. And the responsive theme buries the sidebar stuff at the bottom of the phone, meaning the viewer may never see it.

I agree the existing site is hard to read on the phone, but one can zoom in. At least with the existing site the sidebar stuff is there to see so the reader knows it’s there.

I tried commenting out the viewport line in header.php of The Simplest theme. That seems to resolve the crazy text-wrap problem. But the text still can’t be read without zooming in. And it still buries the sidebar stuff. Maybe I just have to rethink the sidebar and put more in the menu.

Thanks for your input.

Thanks.

I found this thread, which looks like it’s dealing with my issue: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/migrating-wordpress-site-to-new-server-and-new-url/

Just to be sure, when I change the DB, replacing ‘olddomain.com’ with ‘newdomain.com’, following barnez, do is use ‘localhost/newsite’ as my ‘newdomain.com’ where ‘newsite’ is the name of the directory in /html where WP is installed?

Thanks.

I think maybe the problem was that I called my localhost site with the .com extension. In any case I’m just going to create a fresh localhost site without the extension.

Well that doesn’t solve the problem… As soon as I try to go to wp-admin it jumps right out to the live site on the internet.

You know what? I think that dropdown list is generated by my browser, not by the WP login page. I get the same list when I go to wp-admin on one of my other sites, even though those aren’t user=names relevant to the other sites.

Apparently Firefox is saving usernames even when I tell it not to save the passwords. So I’ll have to dig in those settings to see why.

Thanks anyway.

Well I uploaded the file using Filezilla. It shows in the FileManager for my WP site (/xx.com/www/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/DarkHoursReview.odt).

But it doesn’t show in the Media Library.

??

I should be able to do it without FTP, shouldn’t I?

I tried uploading via Media->Add New, but all it seemed to do was to upload the title of the document.

So where is the “Upload/Insert” menu that the codex document tells me I should be finding?

(p.s. I ended up using the Classic block and pasting the document in. But presumably that shouldn’t be necessary when using the new and improved Gutenberg.)