This has been going on ever since I bought the premium version. The story:
I needed a responsive theme. The mobile version of my site looked terrible. So, I decided to pay for the premium membership thinking that would fix my site issues. Unfortunately, it did not.
I love the design, and the [alleged] user friendliness of the site. But, that excitement has abated, in fact it has actually turned into significant dissatisfaction.
Initially, I was happy with the quality. I added the meta slider, put in images, and the site looked beautiful. It was truly a “wow” moment for me. “I did that?” More correctly, the settings made it seem like I was a online landscaper, proficient in awesome design skills–which I definitely do NOT have.
Then, a few weeks ago, I noticed that sometimes my home page would show up, some times it wouldn’t. I logged in to my wordpress and visited my site, poof! Everything looked normal. I logged out and poof, the entire homepage disappeared, all but a heading and a menu filled with blank screen, then some sharing options at the bottom. “Share what?” I thought to myself. If I were to visit the site, I would never return, there isn’t any information on it. Then my bounce rate went from 37% to 78%. What the hell?
So, sometimes the site works, sometimes it doesn’t. However, it ALWAYS WORKS IF I AM LOGGED IN TO WORDPRESS, then I log out and DO NOTHING ELSE, the home page disappears.
Why? Why does my site only function, sometimes, and other times it is just a blank home page? Why does it always function if I am logged in, but it does not function once I log out?
When when I am logged it, it looks like it should on my screen, but when I have a friend looking at the same site, at the same time, the only difference is I am logged into wordpress and they are just browsing my site, does it look normal on my screen, but is missing all of the content, including the meta slider, static menu, images, text, and symbols, as well as “recent blog” posts? I see everything on my screen, but none of that shows up on there screen?
Why does my mobile site do the same thing? I can be looking at my site on my computer while I am logged in, and it looks like it should (meta slider there, and functioning, images, text, etc, everything is there, as it should be. But on my mobile phone, it looks like crap? All if it is missing?
Also, why is it that it only happens sometimes? There are other times of the day that my site functions completely normally? There is literally NO predictability whether my home page functions or not.
I am very annoyed. Especially with the holiday season (the buying season) upon us, I am very upset that my site isn’t working, then it is, then I log out and it isn’t, then I check it randomly several hours later and it is working, then I check again the next day, and it isn’t.
If anyone can explain this to me, I would be very appreciative.
I also have page builder, so maybe it is an issue with page builder. I have no idea what to do.
As of this writing, the home page isn’t functioning properly. That doesn’t mean it will continue to not function, it is entirely random.
Now it is suddenly working again. Everything looks normal, and I love it. But, why can’t it always work? If it doesn’t always work, what is the problem? There is no way that it is normal for a website to sometimes work and sometimes not work.
Also, there seems to be no logical reason for why it looks normal on my screen when I am logged in to wordpress, but when I log out, and do nothing else except visit my web page then it no longer has the slider, texts, symbols, and posts.
So very confused.
I am having the same problem sometimes it works the next I get 404 error telling me to publish the site. Chrome seams to work all the time but not firefox or safari.
Hi liam – if you start your own thread we’ll be able to help you there.
Page: New Thread
Hi David
Sorry to hear about the troubles you’re having. The first thing I’d suggest doing is disabling any caching plugins you might have installed.
Caching plugins will generally create a cached version of your site for users that aren’t logged in because a site generally won’t change for them. They show a freshly generated version of the site for logged in users to account for any user-specific functionality. So it’s possible that the caching plugin has stored a broken version of your site for some reason.
If disabling caching plugins doesn’t work, then try disabling all non-SiteOrigin plugins and see if you still get the issue. If the issue goes away, then reneable your plugins one by one. If that doesn’t work, then try switching to a default theme like Twenty Twelve to see if you still get the issue. If you still get the issue with a default theme disabled, this would possibly point to a hosting issue.
I just learned what caching is. The last time it happened, yesterday (Saturday) I clicked the “Empty All Caches” button on my site. I do have a caching plugin, because I thought that made my website load faster.
I did activate a different theme, three different themes actually. However, I do not remember how they looked.
It is actually not working right now as I type, so I will deactivate all caching plugins and see if it works.
Deactivating the caching plugin did not work.
Going to disable all non site origin plugins now.
Okay, deactivated things one by one. After I deactivated “Meta Slider” it worked. From what I recall, Site Origin told me to download the Meta Slider plugin specifically for this site.
Thus, I am lead to believe that the Meta Slider might be taking too long to load. Could that cause the entire homepage not to load? If so, how do other people use Vantage + Meta Slider and not get random (completely unpredictable) homepage crashes?
Hi David
This isn’t an issue we’ve come across before. Meta Slider is quite a complex plugin (it offers a lot of functionality), so it’s possible that it’s using up a lot of memory and sometimes causing your site to run out of memory. Can you check with your web hosts how much memory is allocated PHP for each request? Can you also check if they can give you access to your error logs so you can see the actual error that’s causing the white screen of death?
Sure thing, Greg. I will contact them today. I will be 100% honest, I don’t even know what you are asking. That is just my limiting online skills. If you want to talk about cognitive neuroscience or nutritional psychology, I am your guy. When it comes to websites, HTML, etc, It’s all a new language to me.
I will contact them and/or look at my homepage of my hosting site for “PHP memory per request” or something similar, as well as ask them about access to error logs.
Luckily, my website is in its infancy and I am only getting 0-10 visitors per day, on average. However, in order for me to be comfortable and confident with proceeding with my site, I need total functionality….especially now that it’s the holiday season, the spending season.
I will allocate some time to PHP memory and error log retrieval for you today.