Nav Bar and Page Issues

  • michaelwolsey

    (@michaelwolsey)


    11 years, 3 months ago

    I am having an issue with a WordPress website that I did not build, but have been trying to make some changes. I will do my best to describe the problem below. I am also not new to WordPress and know a little about coding, but I am not very well versed in css and the syntax so please, if you respond, be as specific as you can with the syntax, where it goes, etc. Thank you!

    Here is a link to the website- http://www.colorado911visibility.org

    The original task for me was to delete the page “Join List” with the URL http://colorado911visibility.org/phplist/. This was a link to a page on a previous version of the site, which was not a WordPress site. Apparently, for some reason, when the site was redesigned as a WP site, they kept the old sign up page for their email list and hard coded that tab into the menu bar. The pages for “Events” and “Press” were also hard coded in so that the page could set to display posts from their respective categories.

    I thought this was going to be an easy fix, but have discovered there was some custom code written here, I have been unable to find in the code where I need to change things. It also seems that anything I have done just makes things worse. The pages that show up in the WordPress back end are: About, Contact, Monthly Meetings, Donate, Invite Us, and the new page I created called E-mail List. The pages Events, Press, and Join List are all not visible in the WordPress back end.

    Additionally, a page I created, “Join Email List” and since deleted is showing up on the nav bar on some of the pages while the old “Join List” page is showing up on the two hardcoded pages, Events and Press.

    I hope I am not making this more complicated. Basically, you can see all this by visiting the site and noticing the nav bar as you change pages. The only page that has the proper nav bar the way I want it is the Home page. Every other page is somehow wrong.

    To complicate matters, if I am logged into the WordPress back end, everything looks fine. It makes things very frustrating to try different ideas to fix things because if I want to view the changes to see if they worked, I have to log out of WordPress.

    I have used Firebug to examine the code, but just cannot find where these changes need to be made. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide!

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • linux4me2

    (@linux4me2)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    I’ve been in the same situation a number of times. It is frustrating, especially when there are plugins that provide the functionality somebody evidently went to the trouble to hard-code.

    To start with, it looks like your theme is called “deepblue,” so start by looking for a header.php file in the wp-content/themes/deepblue folder. Usually, that’s where the nav bar code either resides or is called. However, since the home page has a different nav bar than you’re seeing elsewhere, you may be dealing with code in more than one place. Still, start by looking at the header.php code to see if the nav bar code is either there or called from there.

    While you’re looking in that folder, look for custom template files that they might have written for those extra pages you’re seeing. They’d probably have names similar to the menu names, though they could have consolidated them all into a single file.

    Thread Starter michaelwolsey

    (@michaelwolsey)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    Thank you for your suggestions linux4me2!

    I have spent hours looking through the code for some indication of this part of the nav bar. You are right in suggesting header.php, which was where I first found code for the original “Join List” tab along with the other two hard coded pages. I deleted the code for the “Join List” page and thought I was done with it. Everything looked good, that is as long as I was logged into the WordPress backend. Once I sign out of WordPress, and then look at the site, the only page it affected was the home page, hence, this is the only page that looks correct when viewing while not signed in to WordPress.

    Somehow, the code for these other two pages is affecting the entire nav bar and page structure. I will keep looking and try your suggestion of looking for a custom page template. I had been looking for that or a different style sheet these pages might be calling up but no luck so far. Will keep looking.

    Thank you again linux!

    linux4me2

    (@linux4me2)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    If you’re seeing something different when you’re logged in than you see when logged out, it sounds like your site might be running some caching plug-in, and when logged out you are looking at the cached version of your pages, so your recent changes aren’t reflected.

    Take a look at the installed plugins to see if you can see any related to caching, and then look at the settings for the plugin and clear the cached pages so you’re looking at the new code. You might even want to disable caching while you’re working on the site, then turn it back on when you’re done.

    Thread Starter michaelwolsey

    (@michaelwolsey)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    I solved this problem. Thanks again linux for your help. You were right on the money and your help is much appreciated!

    Purely by accident, I noticed the plugin WP Super Cashe was returning some errors in the WP back end, so I started looking a bit more closely at this plug in per your suggestion. I recall it seemed very weird to me that I was seeing something like 3 different versions of the nav bar, but when I was logged in to WordPress, everything looked fine. It occurred to me that this MIGHT be the problem per your last suggestion. I also noticed when looking at the files on the site with Filezilla that there was a very large number of temporary files that were related to WP Super Cashe….hundreds if not many thousands. I noticed in the back end that WP Super Cashe had never been set up to “take out the garbage” so I set this scheduler and emptied the garbage, and then set the plug in to the default settings. To my surprise, this fixed the nav bar.

    Nearest I could tell and as you explained, the theme was grabbing old cashed versions of the site, which was why I was getting so many variations of the nav bar, but when logged in, the site was fine.

    Thank you again! Problem solved!

    linux4me2

    (@linux4me2)

    11 years, 3 months ago

    You are welcome. I’m glad you got it figured out. Caching can make you feel like you’re going crazy sometimes. 🙂

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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