[Support request] Losing Customizer Settings

[Donna]

For the last 2 weeks our Generate Press customizer settings keep getting botched. This is especially hitting all the font settings and website colors. I get all the fonts set back up and it’s fine and then the next day it’s back to System fonts and default font weights and sizes (we use Google Montserrat fonts). I can send you before and after customizer export files if that helps diagnose the issue.

The Generate Press theme and plugin are up to date.
Thanks

[Leo]

Hi there,

That sounds strange – we haven’t had any other reports on this though so I feel like it’s not caused by GP.

Can you try disabling all plugins except GP Premium and activate the parent theme if you are using a child theme?

It would be good to start a staging site for this as further debugging might be required.

Let me know 🙂

[Donna]

We have a staging site with the same plugins at the same versions. I’m not seeing this problem on our staging site. The biggest difference between the production customizer settings and staging customizer settings is the font settings. Production has something called the “Font Manager” and staging does not. I don’t know how it got in production and why it’s not in staging.

Here’s a snippet from the production and staging customizer exports. Any clues why I keep losing production font settings?

PRODUCTION
“font_manager”:[{“fontFamily”:”Montserrat”,”googleFont”:true,”googleFontApi”:1,”googleFontCategory”:”sans-serif”,”googleFontVariants”:”100, 100italic, 200, 200italic, 300, 300italic, regular, italic, 500, 500italic, 600, 600italic, 700, 700italic, 800, 800italic, 900, 900italic”}],”typography”:[{“selector”:”body”,”customSelector”:””,”fontFamily”:”Montserrat”,”fontWeight”:”500″,”textTransform”:””,”fontSize”:16,
**All the other font settings follow

STAGING
{“font_body_variants”:”100,100italic,200,200italic,300,300italic,regular,italic,500,500italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic,900,900italic”,”font_body_category”:”sans-serif”,”font_site_title_variants”:false,
***All the other font settings follow

[Leo]

Production has something called the “Font Manager” and staging does not. I don’t know how it got in production and why it’s not in staging.

This should help: https://docs.generatepress.com/article/switching-to-dynamic-typography/

Documentation: https://docs.generatepress.com/article/dynamic-typography-overview/

[Donna]

I still keep experiencing this problem and it happened again today when everything was fine yesterday.

Here are some additional clues:

1. All the custom styles will be ok for a day or two and then they get messed up again even when no website updates are happening. This makes me think something may be corrupted in the database or in the caching of styles.

2. When this occurs, all the typography styles revert to theme defaults, along with the back to top button getting turned off – this happens EVERY time.

3. Occasionally, some or all of the other custom styles go back to the theme defaults – layout, sidebars, colors.

4. I’m the only one who uses the Customizer and I don’t remember ever turning on dynamic typography. A couple days ago when the styles got corrupted, I was in the middle of fixing the heading font styles, it suddenly switched from the legacy typography system to dynamic typography. NOTE: I was NOT on the General tab of the customizer when that happened. I was on the Typography tab.

5. A week ago, I was able to get all the custom styles back by changing a customizer setting and changing it back and then clicking Publish.

6. Today I tried item #5 again. This time I was on the General tab. The only checkbox visible on the tab was “Cache dynamic CSS” (which was checked). I unchecked it and re-checked it and clicked Publish. All the sudden I noticed “Use dynamic typography system” (unchecked) and “Smooth scroll” (unchecked) appeared on the General tab. When I went back to the Typography tab it was the legacy typography system. That’s what I want it to be – at least until this font problem is resolved.

Thanks.

[Leo]

I’ve paid close attention the last few days and we haven’t had any other reports on losing customizer settings so I highly doubt this is a GP-related issue.

Are all of the issues happening with all plugins disabled except GP Premium?

Are you able to start a staging site and provide login access to us to see if we can replicate it?

It could be a database issue as well so I’d recommend checking in with your hosting support. Maybe reinstalling WP, GP and GPP.

[Donna]

Since the problem has been intermittent it wouldn’t be practical to disable all the other plugins and wait for it to happen again. We have a staging site which is not having this problem. That suggests it’s something on the production server causing the problem as you mentioned.

Are the customizer settings stored in the database? I can export the database and see if something looks wrong there. I’ll also compare the production and staging customizer settings.

[Leo]

Are the customizer settings stored in the database?

Yes – you can import/export the customizer setting using this as well:
https://docs.generatepress.com/article/import-export-overview/

[Author]

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