[Saruul HParticipant]

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[Saruul HParticipant]

This reply has been marked as private.

[Carmen RParticipant]

Thanx! I started everything from scratch and promise not to change modes again. Curiosity killed the cat 😉
Anyway this is a weird behavior 😀

Again, thanx a lot for the answer.

Keep the great work and support!

Cheers!

[KoryKeymaster]

Saruul, no problem at all, that’s what we’re here for. 🙂 And yes, disabling Visual Composer will have no effect on how the shortcodes function within your theme.

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Carmen, we’re very glad to know you have things ironed out and that you’re good to go! Thank you for your kind words and we look forward to continuing to serve you here in the member area. 😀

[Michael BParticipant]

http://www.divorcerecoverysuite.com/drs/
Current version of WordPress – 3.9
Current version of X – 1.8.3. (Child – 1.0.0)
Current version of X – Shortcodes – 2.1.0.
Current version of Visual Composer – 4.1

also:
Rev. Slider 4.3.6.
Force Regenerate 3.0.3.

A list of any third party plugins installed on your WordPress installation:
Akismet 3.0.0.
All in one SEO – 2.1.5
bbPress Admin Bar 1.7.1.
BudduPress Toolbar 1.6.0.
Google Adsense for Responsive Design – 2.21
iThemes – 4.1.3.
Jetpack 2.9.3.
Simple Pagination 2.1.7.

A list of any third party scripts implemented on your WordPress installation
Google Adsense

A list of any customizations made to your WordPress installation
None

In addition to the information listed above, we require that the following inforamtion also be included:

A detailed description of the issue you are experiencing –
I updated the Theme and plug-ins, but style.css was missing in the Admin area under Appearance (css file was missing during initial installation too). Thinking I needed Composer patch, I deleted Composer 4.1 and uploaded patch. I then used FTP to upload CSS file (style.css). Still no css file. I re-installed Composer 4.1. I checked C-Panel to locate css file, and it is there. The css file appears to be in place but it doesn’t show in Admin area.

A detailed explanation of how to recreate the issue you are experiencing – see above.

[KoryKeymaster]

Michael, when you say you’re missing a style.css file, are you meaning with the theme or the plugin? I’m assuming you mean the theme as this is a common errors some users run into when installing the theme. If you haven’t done so yet, please consult the Updating Your Theme and Plugins article in the Knowledge Base as it goes into detail on how to properly install the theme whether you used the All files & documentation download link or Installable WordPress file only download link from your ThemeForest download profile. It sounds like you might be trying to install the wrong .zip file, which is what would result in an error saying the style.css file is missing. There is also a Theme Installation article that you will likely find very useful as well in case you haven’t seen that either.

Regarding Visual Composer, I see you’re still using v4.1 and you will want to update to v4.1.1.1 as this seems to be the most stable release from Visual Composer recently and the one that most of our users are writing in to report that everything is in order once they have installed this plugin. Again, you can refer to the article mentioned at the beginning of this reply to ensure that you update everything properly.

If this missing style.css file error you’re encountering is in some way related to Visual Composer, I’ll need you to provide some more thorough information on the nature of this error (i.e. any messages you’re receiving, any errors that are popping up, the precise steps you’re going through to try and update everything, et cetera).

Thanks!

[Michael BParticipant]

Let me see if I can be more succinct:

I wrote: “I updated the Theme and plug-ins, but style.css was missing in the Admin area under Appearance…”
The style.css file ordinarily located in Appearance doesn’t have anything to do with the plug-ins, does it?

1. I updated the Theme
2. I updated the plug-ins
3. I looked in the Admin area (the Admin area may be my term, but it is located on the left side of the screen in WordPress. At the top, it lists:

Dashboard
All in one SEO
Posts
Portfolio
Media
Pages
Comments
Contact
Appearance
…
etc.

Up until today, the css file (style.css) has been listed under Appearance. Also included in Appearance was/is Themes, Widgets, Menus and Sidebars.

Puzzled at the disappearance of style.css, I went to my web Host’s Control Panel they provide. In the File Manager, I navigated to public_html/drs/wp-content/themes/x/. It is here where the most recent version of x resides. The style.css file is in the x folder, together with 3 folders (framework, vc_templates and woocommerce) AND and 27 (or so) other files. Again, style.css appears in this folder, on the server.

When I switch back to WordPress, and check for the css file (style.css) in the Appearance link, which has always appeared within Appearance, it is missing. Not there. Gone.

Regarding Visual Composer:

In Updating Your Theme and Plugins, it states:

Visual Composer

Go to the /framework/plugins/ directory within the X theme.
Copy the js_composer.zip file to your computer.
Once you have copied this .zip file to your computer, uncompress it by double-clicking on it. This will reveal an unzipped version of the Revolution Slider plugin.
Connect to your server via FTP and navigate to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
Drag and drop the uncompressed version of the Visual Composer plugin into this directory and ensure that all old files are overwritten.

What does the Revolution Slider have to do with the js.composer file? I don’t see a Revolution Slider plugin in js_composer.zip.

Oh heck, I know your answer will be the same as the previous answers, although those pages aren’t resolving a problem that has me unable to update the site for nearly a week and one or two of you in support offered to resolve this, but later retracted the offer. You made the offer to others (most recently Celests [#35475] on 4/20).

I really like the Theme, but if I can’t get it to work…

I suppose my final option is to hire someone to navigate this labyrinth. Let me know if hiring someone is your only other suggestion since I can’t figure out what is wrong.

[KoryKeymaster]

Michael, regarding the style.css file under the Apperance section, I’m assuming you mean under the Appearance > Editor section as this is where all of the files are listed out for the theme. I’m a little unclear of this though because you state the following:

Up until today, the css file (style.css) has been listed under Appearance. Also included in Appearance was/is Themes, Widgets, Menus and Sidebars.

This seems to imply that you were seeing a structure something like this (order not important, just going off of what you’re saying and trying to clarify):

• Appearance
  • Themes
  • Widgets
  • Menus
  • Sidebars
  • style.css

Again, this seems strange as this is not how this would ever appear natively in WordPress, but going off of your description this is how it sounds like you’re expecting it to function. As stated above, these files are normally listed out under Appearance > Editor, but not in the way it seems you’re describing. If I’m happening to misunderstand what you’re saying, please don’t hesitate to let me know so that I can continue to assist you on this matter. I’ll need you to elaborate on what you mean when you say “in the Appearance link” above, as this is slightly ambiguous as to how you’re expecting things to work.

That all being said, if you were somehow seeing a link directly under the Appearance link in WordPress to your style.css file, this is not how WordPress is intended to function and this could likely be due to a plugin you were using. It seems like the only problem you’re having at this time is the disappearance of this link/file, which is not native and if this is the case then this is not related to Visual Composer in any way.

Regarding the Knowledge Base article listed above, the section you’ve quoted simply contained a typo. We have updated this and appreciate you bringing this to our attention. The instructions still stand and have been followed by a vast majority of our users to easily update the plugin regarding this patch along with all previous versions.

We are happy to login and take a look at things if you need us to, but again we’ll need you to further clarify the issue you’re seeming to have and confirm if our most recent clarification is on point with the issue that you’re experiencing. To assist you with this issue, we’ll first need you to provide us with some information below (don’t forget to select Set as private reply to ensure that your data remains hidden):

1. Your URL.
2. Your WordPress login credentials.
3. Your FTP credentials (in case we need to check anything out on your server).

We offer to login for users to look into particular issues such as this Visual Composer situation lately, however we have found out that the most recent release of the plugin is seeming to address all problems that users were previously reporting. In your previous thread we did login and look into the issue for you and discovered that your theme had been installed in the incorrect directory and provided instructions on how to address this.

We look forward to your response and continuing to serve you here in the member area.

Thanks!

[Florian GParticipant]

Can you please update VC to 4.1.2?

Thank you

[Michael BParticipant]

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[Puneet BParticipant]

This reply has been marked as private.

[KoryKeymaster]

Florian, the latest version of Visual Composer will be bundled with the coming release of X (v1.8.4). Thanks!

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Michael, thank you for providing us with your information as it allowed me to get a much better picture on the situation and see what was going on. We understand that when you’re first beginning to work with WordPress it can be quite daunting at times. While we unfortunately cannot teach our users how to utilize every facet of WordPress and how to get started, we have provided a lot of resources in our Knowledge Base and Training sections that walk through many of the most commonly asked parts of WordPress in great detail and explain how to perform various actions either in written or video form. We also encourage all our users to take some time to go through the countless educational resources for WordPress that are available online such as the WPMU Dev blog, Smashing Magazine, Tuts+, and WPBeginner among countless others. For this particular situation though, I’d like to take a moment to address some of the specific problems you cited and explain where you might have steered yourself wrong in an effort to avoid these issues going forward.

The first thing you had mentioned was that you were missing the “style.css file” link from the Appearance menu in the WordPress admin area. I had explained that seeing this link directly underneath the Appearance menu is not typical, but that you might have been referring to the Editor link underneath the Appearance menu, as this will take you to a section where you can see the file structure of your theme. I had also mentioned that if this link was missing that I believed one of your third party plugins you had listed above to be the source of this issue. Upon logging into your WordPress installation, the first thing that caught my attention was your iThemes Security plugin as these plugins tend to alter the way various pieces of the WordPress admin function, and if you are not as well versed in WordPress these might be things that you don’t notice at first but then later notice things have changed or are “missing” (i.e. the Editor link under the Appearance menu). Sure enough, after clicking through to the settings for the plugin (i.e. Security > Settings), I found an option labeled Disable File Editor that was selected. Directly beneath this option is the following informational text.

Disables the file editor for plugins and themes requiring users to have access to the file system to modify files. Once activated you will need to manually edit theme and other files using a tool other than WordPress.

This effectively means that the Editor section we’ve been talking about all this time would be deactivated and that you would need to manage and edit your files via FTP rather than directly from the WordPress admin area. Personally, I feel that managing and updating files via FTP is a little easier as the WordPress editor can be difficult to work with at times, so I would always recommend doing that if you can. Upon disabling this option, the Editor link returned to the Appearance menu just as expected, listing out your files for the theme.

Additionally, I was able to update your Visual Composer plugin to the most recent version following the instructions referenced in our previous response to you and also available in the Knowledge Base. Going forward we’re working on implementing some automatic updaters to make this process easier, but you can certainly easily integrate the newest versions of these plugins by following the instructions provided as our other users do. If you happen to have any questions, don’t hesitate to let us know, but the step by step details of this process guide you through every facet of the procedure with relative ease.

Finally, as you stated in your response it would seem that you have some confusion on how the file structure of WordPress operates. Again, these are things that are not really within our scope to support and you can read up about these subjects on the various resources mentioned at the beginning of this reply, but I’d like to take a moment to clarify things in an effort to help you avoid any confusion going forward.

The first thing I noticed when connecting to your server was that you had the theme and plugin files uploaded to numerous incorrect directories. I found the theme in your root directory, your plugins directory, and zipped up in your themes directory among other places. These are just some of the places I remember finding the theme (I have already cleaned these out to the best of my ability in an effort to tidy up your installation). Additionally, I found various plugin files (both zipped and unzipped) throughout various directories in your installation where they shouldn’t be. This would appear to me that you were connecting to your server via FTP and simply trying to upload your theme and plugins anywhere in an effort to fix the problems you were having. Unfortunately, this was likely the cause of some other issues.

If you were interfacing with your server directly via FTP, to install a theme you would need to upload the unzipped theme file to the /wp-content/themes/ directory. Likewise, if you wanted to install a plugin you would need to upload the unzipped plugin file to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory. If you’re uploading a theme via the WordPress admin area, you can follow the instructions provided in our Theme Installation video in the Knowledge Base as it goes into detail on this subject. Likewise, uploading a plugin directly from the WordPress admin is very similar, it is simply done from the Plugins section instead.

The other thing I noticed was that you had the child theme file contents (i.e. style.css, functions.php, the framework directory, et cetera) uploaded directly to your /wp-content/themes/ directory. This is incorrect and any of the edits made to this section would not register for your website. You have a child theme installed correctly on your server currently, and I am assuming you have already taken a look through our How to Setup Child Themes article from the Knowledge Base as this goes into great detail on this process. Once your child theme is uploaded to the server, you must make edits to the style.css file within the child theme for any of your new styles to take effect. Similarly, you might want to add some of your own functions, which would need to be added to the functions.php file within the child theme. Finally, you might want to alter the output of some of the Views used within the theme, which is covered in detail in the Customization Best Practices article in the Knowledge Base as well.

Finally, you have a lot of custom styles added to the style.css file of the parent theme, but none of these will take effect as this file is not loaded into the theme for styling purposes. You will need to move these over to the style.css file of your child theme as mentioned above.

As you can see the errors you were encountering simply stemmed from a misunderstanding of the WordPress platform and not realizing the effect that third party plugins can play on your installation. Being new to WordPress it will be very important that you educate yourself on the nuances of the software before delving too deep as it will help you to have a greater understanding of the potential impact of certain features and how to take advantage of these features. Additionally, we stress this a lot but we do so because we provide a great deal of information and assistance in the Knowledge Base and we recommend that you take time to read through that thoroughly when possible, as well as going through the Training section.

Hopefully the explanations provided here have helped to inform you about the incorrect actions being taken and how you can avoid them going forward.

Thanks!

[KoryKeymaster]

Puneet, please refer to the Reporting Issues section on the original post of this thread to see what information we require so that we can look into your issue, thanks.

[anna gParticipant]

Hi,
Team thanks for all your efforts, you did a great job and now visual composer is working again.
I downloaded the plugin from this page. The only thing is that the page asks to update to the new version, with a click on it all is normal.
Kind regards of Anne

[Michael BParticipant]

Hi again-

A million thank yous for your assistance and for the time it took to detail your reply. I very much appreciate it.

You are spot on with the suggestion that I was trying to upload your theme and plugins anywhere in an effort to fix the problems. It felt like I was compounding the problem, but I didn’t know how to reverse-engineer my errors. That wasn’t by design, but how it unfolded.

I am probably not the first person who was determined to put a site together ASAP and did not spend enough time learning the ropes, so to speak. I had reviewed (to some degree) the plentiful resources X provides in tandem with my haste to replace an existing site with a WordPress one 🙂

Some observations:

Prior to the WordPress update a week ago (or so), I was cruising along. All css edits occurred in the css file in the child theme, and not the parent css file. As I look today, your comment is spot on, the css edits all appear in the parent’s css file. I’m certain I must have uploaded the data you see in the parent’s css file (or more likely I moved it to that location via the File Manager in the C-Panel I use from my web host).

Additionally, I noticed today the following code in the child theme’s css file:

@import url( ‘../x/framework/css/site/stacks/integrity-light.css’ );

I presume you added that snippet, because it was not there at any time before today (I copied and pasted the child-theme’s css file into an email before all this started a week ago – I checked that copy, and no snippet). If my memory serves me correctly, that snippet was actually in the parent theme’s css file. Since it is in the child theme’s css file today, I’ll presume it has found the right home. 🙂

I had deactivated the plugins on several occasions (to test Visual Composer) and I looked for the reappearance of the Editor/css file, and it now seems like it should have appeared when I disabled iThemes Security. Perhaps it was a cache issue why it didn’t appear. I don’t think I disabled the File Editor in iThemes, but, there has been a bounty of confusion on this end, so who knows.

I’ve restored the info into the child theme’s css file, and everything looks as it did pre-update 🙂 I will endeavor to spend more time with the resources you mentioned. Maybe I’ll get this right one day.

Thanks again. I really enjoy the X Theme. It is precisely what I was looking for.

M

[Author]

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