[Resolved] Pages Disapper

[John Fiorillo]

I’ve just applied a GeneratePress style to my web site. Now when I make any changes to my site pages they appear as changed ater “update” and “save changes” until I go to “Save and Publish” Then one page generates an “OOPS ” message every time. The menu is unchanged, but somehow the link to this one page gets corrupted.

[Tom]

Hi John,

Not sure I understand – are you publishing changes to a page? Then when you try and view that page, it can’t be displayed?

Try going to “Settings > Permalinks” and hitting the save button – then try again.

Let me know 🙂

[John Fiorillo]

Not exactly. I wonder if I have GeneratePress and WordPress conflicting with one another. I get to the GP Premium features by selecting GeneratePress under appearances on the WordPress Dashboard, then clicking on Customizer on the GP page. Then I have access to all the addons.
So then I make changes to various things and press Update or Save Menu, etc. If I go to “Visit Site” at that point, everything is fine. If, however, I press “Save and Publish” pressing the Navigator button for “About Me” returns an “OOPS can’t find the page” message. It’s always the About page that loses the link.
From my description above, do I have the GP Premium program installed correctly, or not? It does seem like an awkward way to get to the addons.
Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Tom]

Hmm, there shouldn’t be any “Update”, or “Save Menu” buttons in the Customizer – there’s only a “Save & Publish” button.

It sounds like WordPress simply can’t find that page – I don’t think it has anything to do with GP, or even a WordPress glitch. If you leave the Customizer, and go to your live site, does the About Me page return a “Oops” error? Have you made sure that the About page exists?

[John Fiorillo]

If I go to the live page after an Update or Save Menu everything’s fine. If, however, I go to Save and Publish either before or after I do any of the above, I get the OOPS message for the About page. If I ignore the Save and Publish button, the changes appear on the live site. So somehow the two publishing commands (GP and WP) are in conflict. Anyway, that’s what it looks like to me. But I’m an absolute newbie at creating a web site. That’s why your program seemed so attractive.

[Tom]

But that’s where I’m confused, there’s only one publishing command, and it’s WordPress. GeneratePress simply adds the options to WordPress’ Customizer – nothing fancy happening there.

I don’t really understand what’s going on, because of these reasons:

1. There’s no Update or Save Menu buttons on the Customizer.
2. Pressing the “Save & Publish” button shouldn’t return any kind of “Oops” error, because it doesn’t call any pages when pressed, it simply sends the values you’ve chosen to the database.

It would be super helpful if I could see it happen – could you possibly create a video? https://www.screenr.com/

Let me know 🙂

[John Fiorillo]

I just noticed something. I was selecting Appearance then Generate Press then Customiser to reach the custom addons. Your knowledge base says Appearance then Customise. Could the fact that I was going back to GP to reach the custom features have caused this problem?

[Tom]

Shouldn’t make any difference – both links take you to the same area.

If it’s possible for you to make a quick video, that would be most helpful as it should show me what’s going wrong where.

Let me know 🙂

[John Fiorillo]

I’ll get back to this in the morning and since you tell me all the “Save” buttons are in WP, I’ll try to track what’s happening there. Maybe by hitting two different Save buttons, I’m creating a problem. I’ll get back to you.

In the meantime, do any of the GP addons help with importing a PDF file into my site? and,

I bought GP Premium after I had already downloaded the child sheet “Freelancer”

[Dee Broughton]

John –

Are you trying to create a new page and update menus while you have the Customizer open? It sounds to me like you might be just saving changes on top of changes. I’ve seen this kind of problem if I’m not careful to just save changes to a post in one tab or window, too. Maybe try doing the customizing of appearances separately from creating pages and menus, closing tabs you aren’t using? That’s how I do it. If that’s not it, no worries, Tom will solve it. 🙂

[Tom]

Ah – that would make sense.

You should only ever be in the “Customize” area (with the Save & Publish) button when you’re making changes to the front-end of your website.

If you’re making changes in the Dashboard – like updating pages, menus etc.. you should not be in the Customize area.

[John Fiorillo]

I think Dee has probably figured out what I’m doing. I guess the problem is that the Dashboard also has a Customize option. So I’m not certain what you mean by the “front end” of the site. If I’m customizing the typography of page titles, is that dthe front end or the dashboard’s responsibility? Sorry to be thick about this, but this is all new to me.

So if I understand correctly. GP is only used to manipulate appearances and Dashboard of WP is use to create structure and content. If that’s correct, then how does one, for example, change the appearance of one Page without changing the appearance of all Pages (eg. content width in layout)?

John

[Tom]

The Customize area of the Dashboard deals with what the public sees – the visual aspects of the website. So it deals with typography, colors, layouts etc.. You shouldn’t be viewing the Dashboard of your site through the Customizer – this will confuse WordPress.

The things you can edit through the Customizer are global – meaning all pages will take on the changes.

On specific pages, you’ll see a layout metabox (http://generatepress.com/knowledgebase/choosing-sidebar-layouts/ – at the bottom) and other page-specific options.

Let me know if this makes sense or not 🙂

[John Fiorillo]

This makes perfect sense and I think I’ve got the relationship now. That
doesn’t mean, of course, that I’m not losing my mind with the logic of this
entire process!

Now I’m dealing with a drop down menu (My Plays) on the navigation bar that
will contain a list of plays the viewer can choose (it now contains 2) to
see a synopsis of the play. So each play is a sub item of the My Plays
page. The drop down works perfectly, but if someone clicks on My Plays
without choosing one of the drop downs, they are directed to a blank page. Now that I understand who does what, I’m off to WP support to find out how to solve this problem.
Ain’t technology wonderful?

Thanks to both of you for all your help.

John

[Tom]

Hi John,

If you don’t want the parent menu item to go to a page, then add it as a “Link” instead of a Page in “Appearance > Menus”.

Fill in the “Link text” – the name of the menu item.

Then put a # in the URL field.

This will make it so it doesn’t take the user anywhere on click.

Thanks!

[Author]

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