bbhank

Looking at producing a theme independent block that prints EXACTLY as it looks on the page. I can deal with not having WYSIWYG editing but pages MUST print as seen on screen. Not being able to print content exactly as seen has been, and is, a major shortcoming with WordPress, and needs to be amended, improved, and/or fixed.

Lets face it – As wide as the possibilities are with php, and given the strength of WordPress, not much is impossible. We just have to figure out HOW to make it do our bidding. HTML also is very unfriendly to anything WYSIWYG and has to be force fed, shoehorned, into printing what you see.

I have been experimenting with very stripped down themes, starting without style sheets, in a bottom up approach. All work is done in the code editor with the WordPress visual editor turned off. The results are encouraging.

If you are a naysayer with the premise is that something is not possible, think about it. The human mind is too strong, php is too good a tool, and WordPress too versatile, to say that doing something is “impossible”. Programmers, developers, code writers, do the seemingly “impossible” constantly. If they didn’t, there would be no WordPress, no php, no world as we know it, at all.

Success First, Not Failure First.

The WordPress person who was key in my particular solution – see above – is Esmi – Thank you, Esmi.

Our problems are quite similar in that they are load based. To understand that loading takes careful study of log files if one is to customize WordPress in that way. Again, I minimized that possibility by using multiple themes based on one base. I never mentioned that I’m new to WordPress but not to technology, been in that since before desktop computers, so I’m used to the world of command lines and log files. No programmer though, again, that’s why I chose WordPress. If your background, or chosen method doesn’t involve the debugging side of WordPress, I really suggest staying within WP’s boundaries. Theme switching is in a gray area. It’s been a fight here also.

To move toward a solution to your particular issue reedbird8, I suggest a systematic approach. There are two ways to do that: Start fresh and add every module you have one, by one, piece by piece, until you get a crash – Gotta have your logs here. The other is the reverse of this – starting with what you have running without making it crash, and de-install everything until it works, then rebuild from there. I don’t know what your particular installation is, but if I were assigned to a field tech job to diagnose your issue, that’s the method I’d use, without knowing any particulars. That’s the tech world I’m from. I’d also look at the overall strategy and look at alternative ways to get the same look and feel you get from theme switching. Load analysis is a must when you have a ton of pages. The available, lo cost services offer what the average customer uses most. We’re way outside of that. I didn’t want my site to be pounding the server so hard that timeouts would be generate by either load or network traffic. I’m working out and extension to a present script – php – right now instead of creating a new and separate one. Both methods “work” but one uses a separate set of queries. I use the one that is both faster and gets the job done.

Hope that’s of some help.

“Small Change (Got Rained on with His Own .38)”–Tom Waits

One of the reasons I chose WordPress for my endeavor is its ability to handle data in a fast and efficient way. A CMS. One can’t call it a program per se – We aren’t running the WordPress “program”. We’re querying the database and having the theme show the results to your browser with css. If you think in pages, this only fits that model at the screen end, where the viewer interacts with it. To us it’s a page. The beauty of the system is that it that you don’t have to load pages and the overall data transferred is less. We just query the server. In the case of the theme I use all it has to do is fill in the blanks from one or two queries homerun straight to the tables. Select, verify, bang!

Once your theme’s loaded, all it has to do is load data. Theme switching has to load a different set of data. I haven’t tried a wide variety of themes, just test stuff and those used to help solve the reset issue. With this it’s possible some of the problems you had are related to how different the themes are and of course are you running any custom code? My using variations of the same is not the same as total theme switching and I chose that model to have continuity throughout the site – Part of what WordPress does natively but stretching it.

Hand in hand, Dreamweaver and WordPress in tandem rule.

No, we are not alone.

I’d like to share with you and everybody some of the results of my attempts to solve this. I hadn’t mentioned the provider-host for my site. It also is GoDaddy. I made a lot of calls to them, talking with a different tech each time where none of them were willing to admit the problem is on the GoDaddy end. I came back to WordPress and as you see in this thread one of the WP knowledgeable folks posted the skinny about WP. She’s on point with her analysis. Here’s what’s happening with my instance: GoDaddy has timeouts set on their servers. This is a default. I found the actual screen shots for this setting on a linux server, on the web. This timeout is set to 30 seconds by default and GoDaddy utterly refuses to change it , not realizing or caring that it will improve, not degrade, performance(ultimately it helps sell more expensive service packages, upgrades. Why not just advertise limits instead of effectively throttling?). Most of the tier I support people are totally unaware of this, themselves never being server administrators. What this setting causes is when you have a lot of pages, and especially if there are a lot of queries, speed slows to the timeout limit and generates a server reset.

OK. I have a site that started with over 6000 pages and is planned to become rapidly twice that size in pages, then add posts on any, or all, pages, with custom database calls that were, and are, not a part of any theme – entirely developed by, and written by me. I ran into the same problem, and thanks to GoDaddy techs either not knowing, and/or their refusal to up the timeouts, I was left with solving it myself. That solution led to their losing this customer for that service.

First, solution – I moved the site to another host. Didn’t have to move the registration, just the hosting involving only a DNS setting change, and of course buying, and setting up, the service. I now host this site at justhost.com while GoDaddy maintains the registration. Called around and got the responses from several hosts and they were one of the least expensive that explicitly said they have no page limit and have their servers and services set up not to timeout for normal processes. They even offer some options on optimization. Both services an troubleshoot down to the line event.

So what was the actual problem? In my case the timeouts occurred at nearly 5000 pages. I deduced this by starting with a fresh, clean, WordPress installation, with no plug-ins or widgets, using stock 2011 and 2012 themes, then added a couple of extra random themes for testing. I started importing pages incrementally until I got to 5000 pages and where the resets began. Anything less it would work, but slow after about 3000 pages. My limit of 5000 pages may have been from having them change my php.ini file so it used more memory, but that’s on their end and they didn’t want to do it – I can be a persistent b******* when I wanna be :). This was done on the local side also with a slight increase in performance. I’m running xampp.

In your case you might be passing some serious queries making it timeout with less pages but same load. These timeouts are dependent on load and not number op pages. Depends on how your theme(s) and your custom code are operating. Plug-ins, widgets, are a major issue also. And especially – any custom code. I try to keep mine short, clean, safe.

I had the same experience on my localhost. It ran slow but my machine is not a bear, more like, koala or lemur. So between what I learned, Esmi’s input, and having this local setup that did not reset ever, I said this is the wall and it’s time to look for another service. With justhost, it’s faster on the server than ever. No glitches. The one issue I did have was justhost’s security. Their service is not easy or intuitive to set up due to that, but their help is good and once this is done, you’re in, end of story. I’m not plugging their service or anything. Do some homework. There are several in any price range that offer no limit to pages. Due to variance in what we’re dealing with, no host can offer nirvana, just what works for your particular setup.

Multiple themes: There are several plug-ins that say they do this cleanly. I tried a few and found the jonradio-multiple-themes to work for me. I don’t know how it will work as well for anyone else due to the fact I am switching between half a dozen very similar themes, all modified from the original, as opposed to totally different themes, possibly making theme switching easier for the plug-in. Know that theme switching is a touchy process that is difficult for WordPress, so any plug-in that claims to do this has to be cleanly written and possibly for a specific set or type of theme set. Add to the pie that themes also are varied. Add any plug-ins, widgets, and forbid – as i live on – custom code, and —— Whew!

The lesson learned here is that not all providers of any service are equal. Some are better at some things than others while others are better at some things than some. I still have sites and domains with GoDaddy with no intention or need to move them. I Can tell you that Both these service have knowledgeable and nice folks on the phone to help you. That’s a plus. Short wait times, pleasant crew, easy to understand, and they know when to get tier II or III. Who wins? The customer!

Interesting but not good news for folks who want to build sites with thousands of pages – WordPress is a great platform to do that on but shared hosting providers have timeout limits on their servers that help cause problems with large WP installations. As you said Esmi, the problem is at the server and it is within the provider’s control but something they will not alter for one customer. It can only be set globally. Found a reference to this on a linux forum – a control panel where this is set.
Possible solutions: expensive virtual hosting, more expensive special accounts, your own server, or find a provider who does not impose these limits. Know that this is a choice the providers make and is not actually written in stone as they say. So far, however, no provider will admit to such throttling – they all say they support unlimited pages – this might not be any more true than the present provider who is one of the big players and makes the same erroneous claim.

Yup. But i have a very unusual task I am using WP for so everybody might be correct.

Big question gleaned from my conversations with them: Are there there page limits in WordPress? Not Posts but Pages. I have a page for each business. There are literally thousands. There are queries required to generate each page with its associated business information and updates. This is why I’m using WP. Is this too strenuous for the system? I built this in WP for its ability to do this kind of job – and it does exactly what I need! Does it not have the muscle? Is there a way to give it more?

Naturally enough the hosting support is saying I have too many pages, too many queries, and there are a lot, with more in the making.

Modified php Ease Theme.

Yes, that was the only choice in the face of no viable support from the hosting support.

That does run – Ugly but runs – Now to reassemble, piece by piece, the old set and see where it breaks, or If it breaks.

I’ve said all the time its a server issue due to the box saying its is the SERVER that reset, but my hosting support won’t agree.