Jess

Contact your host. Sounds like your server is choking your site, or perhaps you’re on a bad piece of hardware.

It all depends on the agreement that was reached when the author hired the designer, though. Perhaps there is a stipulation in the contract that the designer retains administrative control, for whatever reason. I’ve had clients specifically tell me they don’t want access to anything on the backend, ever, for fear of creating havoc, and only want me to pass along credentials and control if they hire someone else to take care of maintenance going forward, for example.

Sounds heavy handed, but one has to pay attention to fine print…

Looks like a widget, perhaps generated by a plugin – so check the plugin files and settings for ways to customize.

But seriously, you need to validate your code all the way through as well. Here’s why:

http://validator.w3.org/docs/why.html

Code looks ok, except for your empty <p></p>. Use CSS to create vertical white space if needed, or a break for just one line.

Can you provide a link to the website itself, so that we can see the code in context?

Have you tried all of the troubleshooting steps?

• flush any caching plugins you might be running, as well as server and/or browser caches.
• deactivate all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s). Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.
• If you can’t get into your admin dashboard, try resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin (read this page if you need help).
• switch to the Twenty Eleven theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.
• If you can’t log in to change themes, you can remove the theme folders via FTP so the only one is twentyeleven. That will force your site to use it.
• manual upgrade. When all else fails, download a fresh copy of the latest.zip file of 3.5 (top right on this page) to your computer, and use that to copy up. You may need to delete the wp-admin and wp-includes folders on your server. Read the Manual Update directions first.
• check the Master List to see if you’re experiencing a known issue: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/troubleshooting-wordpress-35-master-list

There are a couple of ways you can add a navigation menu to your site.

First, look at what your theme already has. Play with the options on the Appearance_Menus_Screen.

Read through this doc for what WordPress can do with menus: WordPress_Menu_User_Guide

Or you can build a Child Theme and add your own from scratch:
Child_Themes
Navigation_Menus

Try these steps first:

• flush any caching plugins you might be running, as well as server and/or browser caches.
• deactivate all plugins to see if this resolves the problem. If this works, re-activate the plugins one by one until you find the problematic plugin(s). Sometimes, an apparently inactive plugin can still cause problems.
• If you can’t get into your admin dashboard, try resetting the plugins folder by FTP or PhpMyAdmin (read this page if you need help).
• switch to the Twenty Eleven theme to rule out any theme-specific problems.
• If you can’t log in to change themes, you can remove the theme folders via FTP so the only one is twentyeleven. That will force your site to use it.
• manual upgrade. When all else fails, download a fresh copy of the latest.zip file of 3.5 (top right on this page) to your computer, and use that to copy up. You may need to delete the wp-admin and wp-includes folders on your server. Read the Manual Update directions first.
• check the Master List to see if you’re experiencing a known issue: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/troubleshooting-wordpress-35-master-list