Staging conflicts with X

[Steve123]

Hi,
My staging site at Siteground is conflicting with X theme. It would not let me depley the staged site so Siteground support have amended one file, which they think won’t cause problems, but aren’t sure. Can you check, please. Here’s what they said:

"The problem was caused by the application itself. It was throwing an error:

Warning: require_once(/home/customer/www/stevenleebooks.com/public_html/wp-content/themes/core/core.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/customer/www/stevenleebooks.com/public_html/wp-content/themes/functions.php on line 12
Fatal error: require_once(): Failed opening required ‘/home/customer/www/stevenleebooks.com/public_html/wp-content/themes/core/core.php’ (include_path=’.:/usr/local/php71/pear’) in /home/customer/www/stevenleebooks.com/public_html/wp-content/themes/functions.php on line 12

The error was thrown, because the file required in the functions.php in the themes folder is not present:

require_once dirname(FILE) . ‘/core/core.php’;

This is why we commented out the above line in all staging copies as well as the live site and the staging is now working as expected."

Is what they have done okay, please?
Thank you,
Steve

[ruenel]

Hello Steve,

Thank you for the very detailed post information. Regretfully the problem is not caused by X theme. It is very clear that in this error message, the error came from this:

/home/customer/www/stevenleebooks.com/public_html/wp-content/themes/core/core.php

This means the theme currently installed is Core or in the core folder. And besides, there is no core.php file present in the X theme. To resolve your issue, please log in to your FTP of the staging site and remove core folder away from the themes folder.

Hope this helps.

[Steve123]

Hi RueNel,
Thanks for your quick reply.
When you say “remove core folder away from the themes folder” do you mean to delete it or just move it and if move it, to where, please?
Also, should the line that Siteground support changed be put back to what it was originally?
Thanks,
Steve

[christian]

Hey Steve,

Moving any folder or file away from WordPress folders like themes will make that folder or file unusable. It doesn’t matter whether you delete/remove it or move it elsewhere. I’d just recommend that you download the folders or files to your computer for backup purposes.

I’m not sure what Siteground added to your site so we could not comment on it.

Also, those error messages you posted do not involve our theme so I wonder how can this issue come from our theme, X. Would you mind asking Siteground how our theme the caused the issue? It’s very unlikely for themes in general to cause staging issues.

Can you also try other methods of creating a staging site. See https://www.wpbeginner.com/wp-tutorials/how-to-create-staging-environment-for-a-wordpress-site/

Thanks.

[Steve123]

Sorry, but this is extremely confusing.

One X support staff says “remove core folder away from the themes folder”
A second one says “Moving any folder or file away from WordPress folders like themes will make that folder or file unusable.”

Also, while I don’t know much about coding, it would suggest that if a pathway to where the error is generated includes “wp-content/themes/”, the theme is somehow involved.

Who am I supposed to believe and what am I supposed to do?

[christian]

Hey Steve,

I’m very sorry for the confusion. I don’t mean to contradict Ruenel’s statement but to clarify it. What I meant was whether you delete/remove/move folders or files, the result is still the same.

If you see an error coming from wp-content/themes/, it doesn’t mean it’s coming from our theme. What’s coming from our theme is wp-content/themes/x or wp-content/themes/pro. The error in your site comes from wp-content/themes/core and that is not our product. Please contact the Core theme developer.

Thanks.

[Steve123]

Hi Christian,

Sorry, it was bad information I was given by Siteground support that said it was the active theme. I asked for the ticket to be escalated and a senior support member looked at it and discovered it was an old theme which hadn’t uninstalled correctly.

Again, sorry to bother you with this, but I was given poor info.

Thanks,
Steve

[ruenel]

No problem Steve.
If you need anything else we can help you with, don’t hesitate to open another thread.