[Resolved] Impact of this theme on all my other themes

[mywonder]

Hi

One more question. I wrote the question about mobile responsiveness just before this question. I have several other themes that I use, and if something isn’t working in one of them, I check the mobile responsivness in other themes, to see if I can pinpoint the issue.

Using GeneratePress seems to have created a problem with my other themes, in very strange ways. For example, my menu is no longer showing when the site is activated in my other themes. Also, some of the styling has changed when the theme is activated in my other themes, in ways that don’t make sense when using the other themes.

Are you able to help?

Thank you!

[mywonder]

One more thing. When I went back to GeneratePress after using another theme for a couple of minutes, it seems what I did with the OTHER theme impacted the look of my site in GeneratePress negatively, so I had to change my GeneratePress settings back to where I left them before.

This has never happened to me before; I have always been able to switch themes back and forth without a problem, no remnants of any styling showing up across themes. Can you help me understand what is happening and what to do to make this problem stop?

Thank you!

[Tom]

Hi there,

Actually, themes can’t affect each other as none of the theme functions are read if the theme isn’t active.

What you’re experiencing with your menus is a default WordPress behavior – when you switch themes, you need to make sure your Theme Location is set in “Appearance > Menus” – switching themes changes the theme location ID, so it’s important to set it (WP tries to remember if the theme has been active before and the theme location has been set, but it’s not perfect).

Same goes for widgets – changing themes can send your widgets to the “Inactive” area, as the widget ID they belonged to no longer exists in the different theme.

Once one theme is deactivated, the styling and functions of are no longer read by WordPress at all, so I’m not sure what styling you’re referring to?

Let me know 🙂

[mywonder]

Hi Tom,

Thanks for writing. I am happy to hear you say that one theme’s styling shouldn’t affect another’s, because that’s what I had always experienced before, until I used GeneratePress. But I am confident in saying that styling is going back and forth from GeneratePress to my other themes, so maybe if I describe more, it can be figured out.

I am not clear on the logic of how WordPress works, how things are styled in code and where. I have been suspecting that the GeneratePress puts the style code in some sort of general WordPress styling file since it has cross-generated between themes.

I was able to put my menus back into my other themes, so thank you for explaining that part. However, in one of the other themes, the menu items are showing fairly centered (they are in a right widget area within the header) and before I installed GeneratePress, the menu items were to the right of the header. Strangely, I know in Generate Press, the navigation by default is on the right of the screen, and I never touched that part when I played with all the design controls, so not sure what is happening here or how to fix.

Incidentally, all the add-ons I purchased from you are showing in my dashboard for this other theme. I don’t think they work with “other theme” activated, though. I tried to change the header color for the other theme, and it didn’t work. However, when I then switched back to GeneratePress, the color I tried to assign to the other theme’s header was showing up in GeneratePress, even though I didn’t have GeneratePress active when I used the Customizer!

This morning, to make sure I hadn’t been confused last night about which theme I had active when the above-described situation occurred, I did a test. I made sure I had the other theme active. Then I went to the Custom Controls and saw that all the GeneratePress controls were still present (again, something I have never experienced before–each theme has its own set up Custom controls and only those controls have ever appeared in that section before). I again tried to use the Color control to change header color of “other theme.” Did not work in preview nor when I saved and refreshed the site. I wouldn’t expect it to, either. However, when I previewed the GeneratePress theme again, as if I were considering changing themes, my site in GeneratePress had picked up the new color! I made sure to use a bright, stand-out red, so I wouldn’t be confused about having a color near what I had left off with when GeneratePress was active. It looked as if GeneratePress was going to have a bright red header, even though I had worked on the header color with a different theme active!

OK, and here is how “third theme” has been changed by my use of GeneratePress. The header was much narrower any other time I had “third theme” activated. Since reactivating it after using GeneratePress, that header has become much wider (I am talking header height here, not how wide it spreads across the screen), like in GeneratePress. Also, the styling of the title header is no longer correct in “third theme.” The title in “third theme” is wrapping to two lines and the font is different than where I left it. It’s not the font I used in GeneratePress, either, I’m guessing because the header title from GeneratePress wouldn’t fit correctly in “third theme.” However, I had put a ~ sign in place of a hyphen into the Site Title in Custom when I was actively working on my site in GeneratePress, because I liked a font I had found but felt the hyphen was too long in that font, and the ~ shows up in the title now in “third theme.”

I hope this explains what I am seeing well enough for you to explain to me what is going on and how to fix it.

I am hoping the problems I described are simple issues I don’t know about in WordPress like the menu/widget issue you explained. I am hoping that GeneratePress really isn’t adding styling to my other themes! But if it is, I am hoping there is a simple fix to that. Otherwise, the only thing I can think to do is to go through my webhost to park my domain somewhere and reinstall WordPress and start from scratch???

Thanks for your help!

[mywonder]

Hi again, Tom. OK, I am going to correct myself with regard to 6th paragraph above, here, I’ll put it here to make it easier for you. Further investigation proved to me I was wrong regarding what was happening, and I’ll explain below my reprinting the paragraph.

“OK, and here is how “third theme” has been changed by my use of GeneratePress. The header was much narrower any other time I had “third theme” activated. Since reactivating it after using GeneratePress, that header has become much wider (I am talking header height here, not how wide it spreads across the screen), like in GeneratePress. Also, the styling of the title header is no longer correct in “third theme.” The title in “third theme” is wrapping to two lines and the font is different than where I left it. It’s not the font I used in GeneratePress, either, I’m guessing because the header title from GeneratePress wouldn’t fit correctly in “third theme.” However, I had put a ~ sign in place of a hyphen into the Site Title in Custom when I was actively working on my site in GeneratePress, because I liked a font I had found but felt the hyphen was too long in that font, and the ~ shows up in the title now in “third theme.”

OK, the above that I stated was incorrect. The actual reason my header was wrapping to two lines and so much taller was because when in Generate Press, I had created a tagline that wasn’t there when I was using “third theme.” I didn’t add it in the regular WordPress settings, I added it in the Customizer, so I didn’t realize it would show up across my other themes. When I removed it from the Customizer, my header went back to the size I had it at originally 😀 The ~ is still there in the Site Title in “third theme” but I know how to get rid of that now.

The other issues from my original post in this thread are still issues and any help would be highly appreciated.

Thank you, Tom!

[Tom]

I have been suspecting that the GeneratePress puts the style code in some sort of general WordPress styling file since it has cross-generated between themes.

Definitely not – GeneratePress adds styling inside its own stylesheet, and into the wp_head section. No core WordPress files are changed (not even sure this is possible).

The add-ons should be deactivated if GeneratePress isn’t activated – they’re not meant to be used with any other themes. They’ll still show up if GP isn’t activated, as they will run their code regardless since they’re plugins. This may be the cause of some of your confusion.

So, try deactivating the add-ons and switching themes. This will make it impossible (literally, as none of the code can be or is read by WordPress if the plugins/theme is deactivated) for anything GP related to carry on to other themes.

Hope this helps 🙂

[mywonder]

Very much helps! Deactivating the add-ons–wish I had thought of that!

Thank you!

[Tom]

Awesome, you’re welcome! 🙂

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