New user – editor won't start [stuck on loading screen]

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jallen148 August 5, 2016 at 11:22 pm

Heads up! this post was created when Microthemer was at version 4. The current version is 7. Some references to the interface may be out of date.

Have installed Microthemer twice. When launching, it attempts to open but doesn’t go past a loading screen.

Have tried in chrome 51.0.2704.103, firefox 43.0.1, with Word Press 4.5.3. All ad block/scripting extensions disabled.

Can’t click on “unlock” or any other menu item.

Abland August 7, 2016 at 10:33 pm

Hi, jallen148,

Are you on multisite with domain mapping? If so, editing a domain that’s not the primary parent domain is usually blocked by mod_security on the server.

It’s also possible your server has its security reacting to a false positive, meaning it’s mistaking your editing for something bad. That you would have to ask your hosts about.

It could also be a plugin or theme conflict. Deactivate all plugins except microthemer and see if it works. If so, reactivate one by one until you identify the culprit.
If it still fails with all plugins disabled, try the default wordpress theme to see if that works.

Sebastian August 8, 2016 at 11:53 am

@Abland, many thanks for your suggestions, as always.


@jallen148 If you can send me login details for your site via this secure contact form I will troubleshoot the issue for you. Unless you would prefer to try out Ablands suggestions yourself first.

Cheers,
Sebastian

jallen148 August 8, 2016 at 7:46 pm

Thanks everyone!

I took on this project for a university, and I knew they had some crazy tight security restrictions going in – such as, I can only get FTP access to the site through VPN.

I hadn’t done a lot with wordpress so I was looking forward to trying Microthemer to help smooth out layout tasks.

But, Abland hit it on the head – security is too tight for the plugin to do it’s job. I can’t even edit .php and stylesheets using the built in WordPress editor. On top of everything, turns out they’re using IIS servers so, even though I have FTP access, I can’t change permissions on files. Looks like I’ll have to slog along doing things the hard way on this one. I’m sure I’ll get a chance to try Microthemer on another project.

Sebastian August 9, 2016 at 1:10 pm

Ah that’s a shame you can’t use Microthemer on the University server. But thanks for sharing your experience.

If tight permissions cause you a headache when working with WordPress in general, you might prefer to work on a copy of the website locally. Have you used WAMP or XAMPP for Windows/Mac?

Cheers,
Sebastian

jallen148 August 9, 2016 at 9:05 pm

I haven’t… but I think I’m going to!

Besides not liking to work on things “live”, I got a call today while I was out and about asking about one of the social media feeds not updating. Tried to login to the admin console with my phone and remembered: they only allow me to access the admin console from my home IP.

Working on it locally sounds like just the ticket. Is there anything to look out for when uploading the site from a local copy? Any good WAMP related resources you can recommend? (I know that’s well beyond the scope of Microthemer support, but hey… you brought it up!)

Sebastian August 11, 2016 at 12:39 pm

Hey,

Sorry for the slow reply. I went looking for WAMP resources yesterday and then got distracted. I find WAMP to be the easiest of the bunch to install first time without problems, but they can arise. Unfortunately there isn’t a great repository of WAMP learning resources I can point you in the direction of beyond the WAMP forum. I recommend reading the ‘sticky’ posts at the top.

The sticky post about setting up virtual hosts is worth implementing even though it’s a little extra hassle.

Also, tutorial videos will no doubt be helpful.

WAMP is a quick install of (Windows) Apache, MySQL, and PHP (WAMP). These technologies are updated frequently. So try to find recent tutorials if you can, otherwise you may get incorrect information.

With regards to FTP uploading, you will need to have a separate wp-config.php file, as the database connection details will be different on the live site compared to your local install. I normally put it into a sub folder called ‘live’ and then copy it to the root directory only on the live version of the site.

Also, unless you set up a virtual host with exactly the same domain name as the live site, you will need to do a find and replace of URLs in the database. I use this tool for that.

Of course you can use the same domain name as the live site when setting up your virtual host. In which case you will need to update your windows .hosts file when switching between the live and local site (which is covered in the WAMP sticky post about virtual hosts). And to ensure this has an immediate effect, you will want to flush your DNS cache.

I hope that helps!
Sebastian

Martin_1 August 11, 2016 at 10:24 pm

Not to butt in or anything, but my setup contains DesktopServer with a custom blueprint so I have everything installed in one go. WordPress, Microthemer, Yoast SEO, BackupBuddy and so on.

Might that be helpfull for you?

DS has no real learningcurve. So that saves time :-).

jallen148 August 12, 2016 at 2:41 am

Thank you all, that is fantastic info there! That should help immensely.

Sebastian August 12, 2016 at 11:11 am

@Martin_1 your butting in is very much appreciated!


@jallen148 DesktopServer looks like a great option for beginners. I recommend giving it a try first.

Thanks!
Sebastian

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